Bishop Dolan and Our Phony Contraception Debate

The Wall Street Journal's editorial section is doing its best to keep the public focused on the Obama administration's usurpation of constitutional liberties despite the rest of the mainstream media's following the administration's lead and burying the matter of Kathleen Sibelius's ObamaCare mandate in the MoveOn.org file.

In an editorial entitled "Bishop Dolan's Liberty Letter" they bring his studiously ignored correspondence to light.

[quote] Cardinal Dolan explains that "As pastors and shepherds, each of us would prefer to spend our energy engaged in and promoting the works of mercy to which the Church is dedicated: healing the sick, teaching our youth and helping the poor." The problem, and the genesis of this Catholic confrontation with Washington, is the government's "bureaucratic intrusion into the internal life of the church" and its bid "to define what constitutes church ministry and how it can be exercised."

The test of pluralism in a democracy is the protection afforded to minority views, especially of religious faith and practice. Nine of 10 health plans already cover contraceptive and sterilization methods... [end quote]

Pluralism: one of those shibboleths incessantly invoked to advance the sexual revolution that has plagued American politics and social life since the invention of that little mother of discord pictured above. Now that the counter culture is the status quo, and governs, there is evidently no longer any need to respect differences.

The gloves are off, or should I say the mask. Tyranny of the majority apparently isn't such a worrisome thing after all.

[quote] [Bishop Dolan] also relates a remarkable meeting that he says the White House convened with the bishops to "work out the wrinkles" of the mandate... [T]he White House's solution is merely for the bishops to shut up about the wrinkles. Cardinal Dolan writes that "there was not even a nod to the deeper concerns about trespassing upon religious freedom." White House staffers also cited some writings by vicars of the Catholic left in support of the mandate, in effect telling the bishops that they know less about church teachings than your average Washington Post columnist.

As a study in ideology and power, the anecdote is chilling, compounded by all the recent claims by Democrats and liberals that Catholics who actually abide by their faith are opposed to modernity. Such prejudice is supposedly defunct in contemporary America, except when it's practiced against religion...

"Religious freedom is our heritage, our legacy and our firm belief," Cardinal Dolan concludes. The sad reality is that his letter will not persuade the dominant wing of America's governing political party from insisting that religion kneel before its secular will. [end quote]

It will be up to the American electorate, or the Supreme Court, to persuade the Democratic Party that it is unseemly, not to mention unconstitutional, to commit hegemonic acts "inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class it affects" against unpopular minorities (Romer v. Evans; 1996), and religions. Thank God that the editors of the WSJ's editorial page see the problem.

In a related op-ed entitled "Limbaugh and Our Phony Contraception Debate," Georgetown Law grad Cathy Ruse pulls the halo off of Sandra Fluke, she of the mendacious testimony before Congress, which proceeded to kill a provision protecting the conscience rights of people who disagree with her about sexuality.

[quote] Last week Sandra Fluke, a student at Georgetown University Law Center, went to Congress looking for a handout. She wants free birth-control pills, and she wants the federal government to make her Catholic school give them to her.

I'm a graduate of Georgetown Law and former chief counsel of the House Subcommittee on the Constitution. Based on her testimony, I wonder how much Ms. Fluke really knows about the university or the Constitution...

I was not Catholic when I attended Georgetown Law, but I certainly knew the university was. So did Ms. Fluke. She told the Washington Post that she chose Georgetown knowing specifically that the school did not cover drugs that run contrary to Catholic teaching in its student health plans. During her law school years she was a president of "Students for Reproductive Justice" and made it her mission to get the school to give up one of the last remnants of its Catholicism. Ms. Fluke is not the "everywoman" portrayed in the media. [end quote]

No, indeed, Ms. Fluke is a long shot from everywoman. She is uberwoman, a self-appointed champion aiming to force everywoman's church out of business because it doesn't believe what she and the cognoscenti believe: that everywoman must worship at the altar of promiscuity, sterility, lesbianism, abortion, sterilization, death and all the other things that "Students for Reproductive Justice" routinely support.

I do not know if she is a slut, as Mr. Limbaugh contended before apologizing. But she is a degenerate.

The unreported scandal is that even Catholic law schools have been recruiting, coddling, mentoring, advancing, and tenuring womyn like her for decades. She is, unfortunately, no fluke.

Congress and the Obama administration are overflowing with them, as are the courts, law firms, state and local governments, and every institution where there are resources to misappropriate. These monist obsessives are like Orks overrunning Osgiliath.

Today, even men are thoroughly steeped in feminist dogma, especially the ones from big-named schools, or living in what WSJ editorialists used to call the porn belt. In essence, Christians are now reaping the intolerance and narrow-mindedness that law schools and universities have intentionally sown.

[quote] At the hearing of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee chaired by Nancy Pelosi, Sandra Fluke testified as a victim. Having to buy your own contraception is a burden, she said. She testified that all around her at Georgetown she could see the faces of students who were suffering because of Georgetown's refusal to abandon its Catholic principles.

Exactly what does the face of a law student who must buy her own birth-control pills look like? Did I see them all around me and just not know it? Do male law students who must buy their own condoms have the same look? Perhaps Ms. Fluke should have brought photos to Congress to illustrate her point.

In her testimony, Ms. Fluke claimed that, "Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school." That's $1,000 per year. But an employee at a Target pharmacy near the university told the Weekly Standard last week that one month's worth of generic oral contraceptives is $9 per month. "That's the price without insurance," the employee said. (It's also $9 per month at Wal-Mart.) [end quote]

Ms. Fluke joins that burgeoning list of Liberal celebrities that crawl out of the slime to tell the expedient lie at the critical moment, which is shortly forgotten but long rewarded with accolades, publicity, appointments, perhaps tenure and, if she's exceptionally unscrupulous (for a Democrat), a perch in Congress like Ms. Pelosi's. She reminds me of Ron Fitzsimmons, the abortion careerist the Left used to trot out to fib about partial birth abortions being exceedingly rare, even long after admitting to having "lied through his teeth."

Here is a lengthier excerpt from Ms. Flukes testimony to provide a fuller picture of the law as taught at Georgetown.

[quote] Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. Forty percent of female students at Georgetown Law report struggling financially as a result of this policy. One told us of how embarrassed and powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter, learning for the first time that contraception wasn’t covered, and had to walk away because she couldn’t afford it. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception. Just last week, a married female student told me she had to stop using contraception because she couldn’t afford it any longer. Women employed in low wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice.

You might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways. Unfortunately, that’s not true. Women’s health clinics provide vital medical services, but as the Guttmacher Institute has documented, clinics are unable to meet the crushing demand for these services. Clinics are closing and women are being forced to go without...

When [waivers to the non-coverage policy due to medical condition] do exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers, rather than women and their doctors, dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose aren’t, a woman’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.

In sixty-five percent of cases, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed these prescriptions and whether they were lying about their symptoms. [end quote]

Reality to earth, Ms. Fluke. It's $9 per month, for a product more related to entertainment than to sickness.

Not that facts, or truth, matter to the Left. She's know from Saul Alinsky's handbook for revolutionaries that any means to her ends are acceptable.

Sandra Fluke is the kind of witness that gives the law a bad name, and makes everywoman, her husband and her children cynical about the law's ability to render justice.

In this instance, everyperson just wants to be left alone. That used to be called privacy by the Left, which Ms. Fluke is probably too young to remember, and too selfish to care.

Any legal regime that would embrace her likes is simply the rule of womyn masquerading as the rule of law. This is what the sexual revolution has done for, and to, America.

[quote] At issue isn't inhalers for asthmatics or insulin for diabetics. Contraception isn't like other kinds of "health care." Yes, birth-control pills can be prescribed to address medical problems, though that's relatively rare and the Catholic Church has no quarrel with their use in this circumstance. And the university's insurance covers prescriptions in these cases.

Still, Ms. Fluke is not mollified. Why? Because at the end of the day this is not about coverage of a medical condition.

Ms. Fluke's crusade for reproductive justice is simply a demand that a Catholic institution pay for drugs that make it possible for her to have sex without getting pregnant. It's nothing grander or nobler than that. Georgetown's refusal to do so does not mean she has to have less sex, only that she has to take financial responsibility for it herself.

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. [end quote]

Georgetown should be embarrassed to count her among its students. The woman is educated in nothing but manipulation, hyperbole, histrionics, grievance, entitlement, and power dynamics. In this she's just like our President, just not as smart.

There are none so blind as those who will not see. Just because Sandra Fluke and her lesbian friend with polycystic ovarian syndrome wear blinders doesn't mean you need to let the intolerant Party, theirs, rob you blind of your liberties.

I wish we could have an honest, calm, structured, pointed debate about contraception. Among the issues I would love to discuss are :

1. What’s up with these college girls getting contraceptives? Under traditional morality, a young healthy college girl does not need to be on the pill. Where did the presumption come from that college girls “need” to take the pill?

2. There have been some studies suggesting that long term use of the pill and other hormonal birth control has some bad long term health effects. Perhaps this whole area should be looked at more closely, with girls and women cycling off the pill more frequently to give their bodies a break from it.

3. With all the uproar with Rush and Sandra Fluke and all that, we lost sight of the issue, which I thought was coverage of contraception under health plans. We should debate whether contraception is a healthcare issue in the first place. It’s an issue for couples to deal with, but is it a “health” issue as such? Nobody seems to ask this question.

>>...Are we allowed to have conscientious objections or morality play a role in making our public policies on these issues?...<<

Locally? Yes. Federally? No. At most the fed should simply respond, “No Opinion either way”. Same for abortion. Same for healthcare. Same for the car I drive and the gas I buy. Same for the rainwater I collect. Same for how my electricity is made. Same for the food I eat. Same for the milk I drink. Same for how much water my toilet flushes. Same for lightbulbs. And on and on and on...

Local. Issues. All.

But we’ve all completely lost focus and allowed the fed to over-reach in all manner of ways we happen to like, yet we (Conservatives, Liberals, Indies, *everyone*) have the pure, unmitigated gall to complain when the fed intrudes on something (anything) else that “the other guy” may want.

Now, I know that if you and I had a quiver full of magic wands and a bucket full of pixie-dust, things might be different. But all we have is one vote each against a country full of self-centered gimme-gimme voters, spread across the entire political spectrum, who outnumber us. And the nightmare version is that we are outnumbered by folks who not only want, but *demand* the fed to hand-out goodies and regulate “fairness”, “equality-in-outcome” with an ever shifting moral foundation. Leave these issues to the states so I can pick a community with values I agree with and some lib-tard freak can pick a different community with free dope and no responsibility and my taxes won’t support her habits and contraception.

We either need to learn how to tolerate what “we” as a society have begged, pleaded and voted for -or- start swaying opinions and growing our future leaders *right now* to change it and get the train back on the rails — and hope and pray we can start making headway in a generation or three.

Just my opinion and nothing against your comment — it just struck a chord with me about how far the fed has over-reached over the years to the point where we (our country) just lay down and accept it. We may argue that the specific issue is right or wrong, but it seems *nobody* legislating at any political level ever asks, “should this be a federal issue at all?”

I’m coming to see it your way, generally. We no longer have the conditions for a federal union as our disagreements are too fundamental.

You’re right that it was never meant for the federal government to arrogate so much power to itself. Things changed after the Civil War. The Supreme Court used the 13th and 14th Amendments to squash the states and turn the federal government into a hegemon for “good,” as defined by itself and the political power.

Since it’s in Lefties DNA to act collectively, it’s gone all their way. It’s time to smash this mother to bits—50 bits. Then, each bit can be smashed into the number of counties, municipalities, etc. If we’ve got to fight all the time just to be left alone and not be made to cooperate with evil, then we need to bring the fight closer to home, where it’s easier to show up and scream at their perfidy.

Yes, and no.

The question of what business it is of the federal government’s to order anyone to do anything about contraception is fundamental. It points to why ObamaCare, and every federal entitlement is a bad idea: the cost is too high in terms both of liberty surrendered and ruinous public expense.

But, the crucial constitutional point for every American is our liberties guaranteed under the 1st Amendment. The issue of the federal government’s telling the Church what to believe, and fund, is chilling. It demonstrates what everyone who isn’t a lefty knows; that when the left talks about liberty, it means something that applies only to its own view of things. Everyone else’s beliefs and actions must conform to iron whim of left, or be crushed under the iron boot.

The subsidiary issue of whether the Church has a reasonable argument on contraception is worth having, not only because of the biological, environmental and social science that evidences the pill to be a very bad thing indeed. But, also because of the flimsy intellectual and legal pedigree of the Leftist position.

It was the left that pushed contraception onto the culture in 1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut. That decision was justified by the “sanctity of the marriage bedroom.” By Eisenstadt v. Baird three years later, the equal protection clause was deemed to render that sanctity moot. Contraception for everybody, whoopee!

By 1973, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton made abortion on demand without apology the law of the land using the same reasoning, which incidentally, was the following. Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) upheld parents’ right to educate their children; therefore, it gives prospective parents the right not to have them, even to kill them in the womb. How’s that for bull puckey?

In 1992’s Casey v. PP decision, the Supreme Court told us to shut up, and that we were being tested. Because of Ross Perot, Americans dutifully complied with their master’s command and elected a pro-abort’s pro abort as President. By 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas, the Court was ready to reverse its own 1986 decision in Bowers v. Hardwick on gay sodomy.

This is an entirely illegitimate intellectual pedigree. The Left has never had to answer its critics because the Court has always muzzled the Left’s critics and granted victory to the bad guys with a banging of the gavel and a few disingenuous sophistries on paper. Now that they’ve brought the issue up due to their oafish imposition, it’s opportune, and important IMHO.

Question concerning Roe-and Doe ( and incidently your reply is EXCELLENT— my question is is a Law prefaced upon Fraud -i.e. bad law like an argument rested upon fallacy equally fallacious. In other words —if Roe and Doe were based upon Lies told both in Court and by the Court —ought that law still be respected as Law —or is it no law at all? as suggested by Marbury v. Madison,1803?I do realize that Roe and Doe have been widely accepted as legal and binding but I am not convinced either have ANY Constitutional basis -as suggested by Robert Bork- The Tempting of America— Slouching towards Gomorrah on ROE and Harrys’ abortion.

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