I’m writing in response to Sophia Fazal’s column “Birth Control should not be considered a controversial issue.” The title of Ms. Fazal’s column is correct; birth control should not be considered a controversial issue. However, forcing religious institutions to violate their consciences is.
The supposed debate on birth control took off when third-year Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke testified to a House committee that, “Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school.” To begin with, this statement is a gross exaggeration. The Weekly Standard reported in February that generic birth control pills cost $9 a month without insurance, according to an employee at a Target pharmacy in Washington, D.C. Ms. Fluke’s assertion that buying her own birth control is a burden is nothing but rhetoric designed to justify forcing religious institutions to violate their moral convictions. Worse, Ms. Fazal’s article skips the crucial, bigger moral issue: The mandate would require the Catholic Church to provide abortifacient drugs — ones that cause abortions.
The Catholic Church morally opposes the use of contraceptives to induce abortions or prevent pregnancy. Requiring Catholic organizations to purchase insurance plans that provide such birth control violates the Catholic Church’s right to freely practice its religion, a right that is protected under the First Amendment. Perhaps the Left would be more outraged if a Muslim or Jewish restaurant were forced to serve pork despite the dietary restrictions of Islam and Judaism. Perhaps the Left would be more outraged if Quakers were forced to go to war, despite their religious oppositions to violence, which the law recognizes and grants an exception for in the case of conscientious objectors.
Cathy Ruse, a graduate of Georgetown Law, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in March, “Should Ms. Fluke give up a cup or two of coffee at Starbucks each month to pay for her birth control, or should Georgetown give up its religion? Even a first-year law student should know where the Constitution comes down on that.”
What gives Ms. Fluke the right to force other people to pay for her protected sex? Contraception isn’t a medical necessity; it can be used to treat hormonal problems, and the Catholic Church does not oppose its use in such cases. But contraception, generally speaking, is only crucial when trying to prevent pregnancy. Humorously enough, pregnancy can be prevented even more easily through simple exercise of self-control. Imagine that.
If women choose to be sexually active and wish to prevent themselves from becoming pregnant, it’s simple and inexpensive to acquire birth control pills without involving religious organizations that morally oppose their use. Taking financial responsibility for the potential consequences of sex isn’t a burden; it’s part of being a sexually active adult. The Republican Party and the Catholic Church are not trying to make birth control illegal. Conservatives are merely protecting the Catholic Church’s basic Constitutional right to religious freedom, which includes not being forced to provide abortions through having to pay for abortifacient drugs. Forcing the Catholic Church to violate its most deeply held moral teachings to allow women free abortions and birth control which are already readily available, with or without insurance, is an unnecessary and unconstitutional act that weakens our country’s guarantees of religious freedom and provides the federal government with a dangerous amount of control over religious institutions.
Ms. Fazal’s argument regarding a scenario in which a non-Catholic woman takes a job at a Catholic university or hospital and suddenly loses her individual freedom to decide whether she has more children due to lack of access to birth control through the institution’s insurance plan misses the point. The woman described has the individual freedom to choose not to work for an institution with whose moral convictions on abortion and birth control she does not agree. The woman also has the individual freedom to either refuse to participate in the institution’s insurance plan and instead purchase birth control independently or through an outside insurance plan.
Additionally, it makes no sense to pay for trivial expenses through insurance plans. That’s why toothpaste isn’t covered by medical insurance plans, even though it’s required for good dental hygiene. That’s also why contact solution isn’t covered by medical insurance, even though it’s required for proper care of contact lenses — it’s inefficient and would distort the market.
Ms. Fazal wrote, “The problem here is control: Republicans, the Church and other religious interfaces are fighting a battle for control that is meaningless in a world that is already a decade ahead of this medically mundane approach.” I beg to differ. Religious organizations’ control of their consciences is of utmost importance in a world that is rapidly loosing sight of the value of religious freedom and the separation of church and state.
Claire Chretien is a freshman majoring in American studies.
