Posted on 12/17/2012 8:38:45 AM PST by marshmallow
I believe that the Governor and the Archbishop may be arguing past one another.
He does have a point. If the birth control was available for purchase, then no one has to be forced by Obamacare to purchase it for anyone. The people that want it will buy it themselves.
Exactly. The Archbishop apparently mistook Jindal’s recommendation as promoting artificial birth control.
The Romanists and their progeny have been trying to reclaim control over the government as they did in Europe. That is why people left Europe to come here, and still do not want the religious component to make up a private citizen's minds over his/her own will. Imho
but he is promoting b.c.
the church is against any form of b.c. like that....
no one is ‘talking past’ anyone...
The Church can do what it wants, but is this logical?
Contraceptives are legal. The church argues morality. Jindal’s proposal makes contraceptives cheaper to obtain, and increases the risk of medical problems for women who don’t have a physician checking their reactions to the drug.
But notice the church is not arguing that Jindal’s idea is immoral because it puts women at medical risk.
They are arguing about the morality of using the drug at all.
By making the drug cheaper, Jindal is lowering the barrier for use (although really, anybody who is too poor to afford a medical visit can get a free medical checkup, or go to a free clinic, and get the prescription, and Walmart already sells the more popular drug for $4 a month so it is hardly going to get THAT much cheaper).
But since they make a moral argument, I would object — morality is based on a person’s choices, not opportunity. A woman who would desire in her heart to use contraceptives is not made moral because they can’t afford the drug.
Arguing that we should help people keep from sinning by making it marginally more expensive for them suggests that greed should drive morality, rather than a belief in doing what is right.
I don’t believe that contraception in itself is immoral, I am simply adopting the hypothesis for the purpose of discussion. My point being that Jindal’s suggestion does not appear to be immoral even if you oppose contraception, because he is NOT making it legal when it was once illegal, he is simply removing the government’s role in contraception, which actually helps the taxpayers who think that they are corrupted because their tax dollars are involved in contraceptive decisions.
Which I think was Jindal’s goal — to make contraceptive use an individual choice, so that doctors and taxpayers wouldn’t be involved, and we wouldn’t have political arguments surrounding a moral/church question.
I like Bobby but he is wrong on this one.
The reason they should require a prescription is that in some women they can have serious- even fatal- side effects. Of course this only works if the doctor is competent and has some medical history and baseline on the patient.
But not everyone is against birth control. The Archbishop is free to express his opinion on the subject, but is, and should be, totally powerless to prevent anyone from getting birth control. There are millions of non-Catholics in the country. They shouldn’t have to live under Catholic law. At the same time, if birth control was available without going through insurance companies, then people could just buy it on their own.
Exactly!
However, the leaders of the Catholic Church often do not understand how to fight the Left, as they tend to be PART of the Left.
Much to my frustration!
I still have a difficult time in believing that Jindal said this. However, if he did, he is not mentioning the possibility of these teenage pregnancies carrying the child to term and then offering it for adoption.
I don’t think we are getting the whole story here. Did something get taken out of context?
There’s plenty of data to show that prescription availability of the pill has had serious negative side effects on the country. It is the chief factor in the sexual revolution and the rise of casual sex. This is a moral blight on the society that the Church rightly concerns herself with. It was predicted exactly by Paul VI and everyone laughed at him. But time has proven him prescient.
Making the Pill OTC can only exacerbate this problem.
Those on FR who use this opportunity to drive a wedge between Catholics and non-Catholics do a disservice to all of us who care about the health of marriage and sexuality in our society.
The “ho-hum,” it’s just contraception, who cares, doesn’t hurt anyone as long as it’s freely chosen” attitude you and others offer here will come back to bite you in the butt some day. But by then you’ll have some other explanation why it’s all the Catholic Church’s fault when she was just pointing out the facts of the matter: contraception destroys healthy attitudes toward sex. Period. Sex is about procreation. It’s also about other things but it is irreducibly about procreation. Deny that (which is what ho-humming contraception does) and pay a price for it down the road.
And exactly how is Jindal not promoting contraception when he advocates making it a hundred times easier to obtain? If his purpose was to get around the HHS mandates, then he’s a fool—his prescription for cure is worse than the disease.
Jindal’s a fool because if indeed the Pill were made OTC, then OTC pills free of charge would still be mandated under new HHS Regs.
Yes, of course “health insurance” is supposed to be limited to prescription medications. But don’t kid yourself. Sebelius would just turn around and say, with Sandra Fluck: hey, contraceptions (actually including abortifacients) are so utterly utterly crucial to women’s health that we at HHS now MANDATE that all employers of more than 50 people provide free of charge OTC contraceptives to their employees.
The King-God has spoken, Long Live the King-God.
Don’t think for a moment that HHS would let Jindal outflank them in this manner. The original HHS regs were never about women’s health. They were always about power. And if Jindal thinks he’s so clever to try this flanking maneuver, he’ll learn very fast that the Power-hungry Gods of Washington will NOT ever give in on this one.
They’ll just mandate OTC pills. Just on principle.
There is far more demagoguery here by Protestants seeking to impose their will on Catholics. By marginalizing us, you play right into Obama’s hands. Jindal is a moron. End of story. Making it OTC will increase it’s usage, which is contrary to what the Church teaches. Jindal is a Catholic (or at least purports to be), thus he has an obligation to actually do what the Church teaches including on contraception.
Was God promoting sin by putting the apple within easy reach?
That implies that we should legislate the moral teachings of the Church. But not in an absolute way, such as by banning contraceptives, but through coercive means, such as by imposing needless regulation to drive up the costs of something to discourage it's use.
That seems like a backwards way to make a philosophical point. I realize though that since I don't agree with this particular teaching of the Catholic church, I don't have the same perspective. For example, I am all for regulatory hurdles that help stop abortion, because I believe abortion is wrong. I don't see contraception in all forms as wrong, so I view the ban as a religious tenet, and don't support increasing government regulation to encourage non-Catholics to follow the Church's religious teaching.
Obviously, if you believe that there is an inherent societal harm to contraception, you might look at increased government regulation as a reasonable method to force people to follow the religious tenets and therefore reduce the incidence of the societal harm.
But then my other argument applies -- there is no evidence that any person is making a choice about birth control based on cost. So in this case, I would argue that switching from prescription to OTC won't increase the incidence of use of contraception, and therefore won't achieve the goal of using government to enforce the religious tenet.
And it DOES do direct harm, by injecting government control into an otherwise personal choice, and involving taxpayers indirectly in the contraceptive decision, which could be a moral issue for some.
Why aren't we mad at all the other Catholic politicians who are not working to make it HARDER to get contraceptives, like proposing excise taxes like that for alcohol? Sure, they would fail, but at least it would be a more principled attack, using government to stop the use of contraceptives.
Your side seems to be arguing that Jindal's proposal is a fundamental change in the contraceptive equation. But it isn't. The Church opposes all contraceptive choices, but several, like Condoms, are already OTC. And anybody can get a prescription with little or no cost, and the pills are dirt cheap already. Jindal's sin is to remove one governmental barrier to the use, making it an individual moral choice. And in the end, I think for things that are NOT societally harmful, faith is best exercised by individual choice, not by government coercion.
In other words, I think it profits a man nothing if the only reason they don't sin is because they are prevented from sinning by the government.
Spewing bogus “Romanist” garbage can't change the fact that "non-Catholic Christians" are now and always have been the majority in this country.
As such, this country is a fine example of where "roll your own Christianity" has been heading ever since Luther preached that following Eve was the same thing as following Christ.
From ordained queers marrying other queers to one another, to the nuts like Koresh claiming to be a prophet, all the non-Catholic pseudo-Christians in this country insist they base everything they believe entirely on Scripture illuminated by the Holy Spirit, and they can all "prove" they're right just as much as anyone else can.
When people adopt Protestant doctrines they're really adopting the Self Worship of “to thine own self be true” and rejecting Christianity. That's why over time all non-Catholic churches drift away from anything like true Christian beliefs and into whatever makes the wallets in the pews most comfortable with their Self Worship.
If the folks who spew their "Romanist" and "Papist" garbage had spent a lot more time working to keep their fellow non-Catholic pseudo-Christians at least close to being Christian rather than blathering lies about the The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church Jesus Christ Himself founded the country wouldn't be in the mess the majority has made of things.
When non-Catholic Christians in this country rise up and halt the murder of over a million infants a year by abortion and about twice that many with contraceptives, they won't need to try their comical "Romanist" lies to divert attention away from their worshiping of their own, Most High and Holy Self rather than Jesus Christ and the disastrous results of their narcissistic Self Worship.
My point was that as a matter of policy, it would NOT increase the use of birth control, as the accessibility of birth control is pretty much universal, with no appreciable barriers to either availability or price, despite what Obama has argued.
Making some common pills OTC could increase the total use somewhat. It might even draw a few more individuals into use (these are separate issues). But when virtually every woman has used some sort of birth control at some point in their lives, there are few “new” women to be brought to use by such a rule.
My bigger point, given this is a religion thread, was that the morality of contraceptives does not lie in the manner by which they are obtained, but rather in their use. And sin is an individual act, where an individual decides whether to obey God, or disobey. Jindal might make it a bit easier for a woman to sin (again, I will adopt as a premise that contraception is a sin). But sin is not judged by the ease in which it can be engaged in.
We aren’t discussing making it legal where it once was illegal. We are talking about getting government regulations out of the process. Yes, government regulation can drive up costs and therefore discourage some use; but they also entangle all of us in the matter.
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