Contraception "Controversy"

Hello bloggers! It's been a while I know. It's probably time I just admit that I'm not going to be able to post every day (let alone multiple times every day) while I'm in school. Just a fact of life. Let's just say I'll do it when I can. ;-) Don't let that discourage you from visiting the page often though! Let's generate lots and lots of traffic so that Joey gets noticed! :)

At any rate, I read a very interesting and thoughtful piece by Steven Mazie on Bigthink.com about the unbelievably overblown contraception mandate "controversy" the other day. I'm still getting over the stir this mandate has caused- the last time I checked, the use of birth control was as mainstream as the use of hand sanitizer, and wasn't controversial with anyone but a man in Rome who's taken a vow of celibacy, as well as the sheeple that accept his word as the Gospel truth... even when it conflicts with the spirit of Jesus's teachings on tolerance and love of neighbor, y'know... the actual Gospel truth. Mazie writes:

It would be very difficult to portray the Health and Human Services guidelines as anything but neutral and generally applicable.  The mandate provides that every new health insurance plan must include preventive care for women, including disease screenings and contraception, free of charge.  Whatever else you might say about these rules, there is no lurking agenda here to insult the Catholic Church.  The impact on Catholic institutions is incidental... And in this case, the impact is less than negligible: no individual Catholic is required to prescribe, or provide, birth control to anyone and (according to Obama’s announcement on Friday) no Catholic institution will be asked to spend a penny on these services.  The mandate requires only that women who work at Catholic institutions be provided with benefits that include preventive health services... The Health and Human Services guidelines serve important public health goals and threaten no defensible concept of religious liberty.

Couldn't have said it better myself, except maybe for a rebuttal to the very lame, recent argument by some Catholic leaders that they are still violating their consciences by having to pay insurance companies to provide birth control for their employees. The fact is that every day, each one of us funds (indirectly) causes which are antithetical to our beliefs- such is the nature of an interdependent economy. For Catholic bishops to say that their funding insurance companies which provide birth control is tantamount to directly funding birth control itself, is as ridiculous as saying that anyone who buys gasoline produced with Saudi oil is guilty of supporting the Saudis' barbaric policies towards women (except, unlike the use of birth control, the Saudis' violent sexism actually is something worth objecting to). In an interdependent economy, we spend money for goods and services, and whoever receives that money then is free to use it for whatever they wish- that's just the way economics works, and it's about time the US Conference of Catholic Bishops makes peace with that. In the interests of President Obama's re-election prospects though, one can hope that they don't until after November- because if this election is a somehow a referendum on the accessibility of birth control (which it very well could be if Rick Santorum somehow won the Republican nomination), Obama's got it in the bag.