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COLUMN: Paying for pills

By Emily Grove on February 10, 2012 1:13 pm in Columns / 22 comments

 

Right now many religious leaders and organizations are up in arms about the possibility of being forced to offer insurance plans covering birth control for their employees.

But simply put, belief and faith are not valid  reasons to deny someone vital health care.

My mom works for a Catholic hospital. My family is not Catholic. Should our health care be determined by someone else’s beliefs?

When I was 18 years old I mustered up the courage to ask my mom if I could go on the pill. My heart raced as I waited to hear her response, hoping to avoid judgment and avoid crushing her. But what came next almost broke my heart.

Tears welled up in her eyes and for a second I wanted to take back my request, but then she spoke. She told me she couldn’t afford the extra expense and her Catholic employers would not pay a penny for it.

My mother had been working at a hospital for 25 years. I knew how wonderful our insurance was. I knew our co-pays were low and almost everything was covered. I just assumed the pill was no different.

But the pill was the exception, the thing they would not touch.

This was shocking and disturbing to me. What right did they have? My mother wanted to provide something for me, something that her insurance should and could have covered, but they chose not to.

I don’t think employers should have that choice. Employees should have the choice of what they want to spend their health care coverage on.

In the United States today birth control is a huge part of women’s health care. To deny coverage based on religious conscious is not only wrong, but ridiculous.

It is worth noting that birth control is not the satanic pill reserved only for the jezebels and floozies of the country that some ultra-conservatives make it out  to be. The pill is not just for preventing unwanted children.

A study last year based on U.S government data from the National Survey of Family Growth found that of the women that use birth control, 86 percent use it for pregnancy prevention, but other reasons were also given. The pill is used to reduce cramps or menstrual pain in 31 percent of its users. Another common alternative reason for taking the pill was for the treatment of acne, which 14 percent listed.

Opponents to covering the pill may have their minds blown even more when they hear that the study found 762,000 women who have never had sex use the pill, with 99 percent doing so for noncontraceptive reasons.

Birth control is important for women. I can almost guarantee that more women in the United States use it or have used it compared to a minority that doesn’t or hasn’t. It’s not going away, so pay up and support women’s health. Just swallow that pill and get over it.

 

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About the author

Emily Grove is currently Metro Editor and a former Senior Reporter at Central Michigan Life.

 
  • Anonymous

    The pope thinks he can tell a Man who is HIV+ not to use a condom when he engages in sexual activity with his wife. His eminence does so whenever he visits the third world. The phrase “God has a plan” seems lackluster. Organized Religion does not care about humanity.

  • Anonymous

    In your hate filled mind can you possibly imagine an exception would be considered? P.S: God cares very much for humanity. He sent His sin to die for humanities individual and  collective sins, as well as dictated a very clear rule book on how to behave, which if followed would have avoided the problem you cited.

  • Anonymous

    The women work for their pay packages. They earn them. A fair employer would not try to attach strings to the insurance in their pay packages, and would treat the women as adults, letting them act as their own moral agents, spending THEIR money or THEIR insurance as they think best. What I see are a bunch of old-granny bishops with thin-skinned consciences, laying awake at night feeling guilty about how their employees are using  either the money or the insurance in their pay packages. The Catholic Church needs to grow up.
    Also, how refreshing that the word “compromise” is back in the US presidential vocabulary, after the eight years from 2000-2008, when it was utterly lacking, replaced by the word “swagger.”

  • Anonymous

    Society has been PAYING up for women’s sexual immorality for generations. The cost of 50 million abortions, sexually transmitted diseases, out of wed lock births and welfare costs. At least I will derive a small measure of satisfaction in knowing that when you walk out of this university and get a job those cost will becoming out of YOUR pay check.

  • PEE

    Great piece – terrible situation… really ignorant comments. Can’t we discuss issues without dismissing an entire religion, or being incredibly sexist?

  • construction1

    Woah. Woah. Woah. Women’s sexual immorality? Unless these women go by “Virgin Mary” I think you are missing the penis that impregnated them in the first place. It’s the destructive, sexist views like yours that are preventing women AND men from getting the health coverage they deserve. Welcome to modern society, Ward Cleaver. 

  • Sunny_shine16

    And how much would it cost to raise those 50 million abortions into children? Far more than it would have cost to abort them in the first place. You can tell kids not to have sex until they’re ready to have a chile, but it doesn’t work that way. So tough luck.

  • alina

    You mean a Chinese-American woman, who probably speaks ENGLISH.

    Thank you, Nathan. These commenters are dimwits.

  • Michmediaperson

    Emily, you want to overthrow the US Constitution and the 1st Amendment.

    The Federal Government has no right telling any religious group that they have to provide abortions, birth control, etc.

    If any employee is unhappy, then they either live with it…………..or quit!!!!

    Freedom of Religion is a 1st Amendment right.  It is no business of Barack Hussein Obama to overthrow Catholic doctrine (and I’m not Catholic).

    If CMU and Mt. Pleasant Public Schools want to offer abortions in their health care insurance, then it’s fine  (I don’t approve it) because CMU and Mt. Pleasant Public Schools
    are public.  If Sacred Heart downtown or lutheran K-12, colleges, etc., it is their choice, not Obama’s choice.  It’s like the Amish.  This is Big Government trying to run our lives.

    Hopefully, churchgoers will vote against Obama this fall and elect Republican Congress people and whoever runs against Debbie Stabenow.

    Hey, Emily, if Obama passed a bill tomorrow telling you that newspapers can no longer say anything negative about him or the Democrats, would you agree……………or tell him to get lost, because you have a first amendment.

    If Romney or Santorum is the next president and they order no more columns by Michigan newspaper people on wanting health insurance companies to pick-up abortion and birth control pills………would you say OK?  Or, would you tell them to get lost because you have a first amendment right.

    If people of religion didn’t see the real Barack Hussein Obama today and the past couple weeks, then they are really stupid.

    As Bill Donahue of the Catholic League said today  (Donahue is the guy who blasted Mike Rao and the CMU Administration for trying to ban Christmas about 6-7 years ago)  I like what he said today.  ”Does Obama think we Catholics are stupid.”

    Obama needs to be fired this fall.

  • Guest

     No one is telling any religious group that they have to provide abortions, birth control, etc. There was already an exemption for actual churches – organizations that instruct members in the faith.  But if the Catholic Church wants to run hospitals, social service organizations, etc. then those should be treated the same as anyone else, and not get special privileges.  That would be a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

    They have universal contraceptive coverage in Italy, by the way, and 98% of Catholic women have used birth control rather than natural family planning.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/13/us-contraceptives-religion-idUSTRE73C7W020110413

    I hope churchgoers do go out to vote in the fall.  Which party agrees with the Catholic Church on the death penalty?  The Democrats.  The Iraq War?  The Democrats.  Predatory capitalism?  The Democrats.  Social justice?  The Democrats.  Global warming?  The Democrats.  Evolution?  The Democrats.

  • D-Rock

    This is about birth control, not forcing Catholics to perform abortions. Your strawman is not working.

  • Michmediaperson

    Guest, you’re totally wrong.  If a Catholic university or K-12 does NOT want to offer their employees the right in their health insurance program for abortions, birth control pills, etc., then they have that right.  They are a religious institution and they are following their church doctrine.  Peter Johnson is on Hannity right now talking about James Madison and what he wrote back then about the freedom religion.  If the late Jerry Falwell’s school, Liberty University, doesn’t want to offer abortion, pills, then it’s their right to.

    Guest, what about the University of Notre Dame that doesn’t run a hospital.  They are a private catholic university and no Republican, no Democrat, no Federal Government person has the right to tell Notre Dame or any of the Dutch colleges in Grand Rapids what they can or can’t offer in their health care offerings.  None of their business.Since when do we follow the Italy Constitution????You may be learning in political correctness class at CMU that we are a global community and internationalists….but that’s a bunch of left-wing nonsense.We have a Constitution.  We have to follow it.  First amendment says Freedom of Religion.  The Government can’t come in there and violate their church doctrine.Social service organizations?  What happens if Catholic Charities or any other religion ceases this charitable cause?  They have 70,000 employees.  THey could face an Obama fine of $140 million in penalties.  Notre Dame would have to pay $10 million.They do have one option.  Pay the penalty and have the employee go find their own health insurance which will cost more and may be hard to get if they have pre-existing conditions.  Emily is that what you want in this country?This president is out of control.  He sat for 20 years listening to that racist Chicago minister Reverend Wright  (his sermons are on You Tube Guest).  He has mocked all Christian faiths.  Hopefully, the Supreme Court will strike down Obamacare later this year and we elect a Republican.Guest, you and Emily, obviously don’t believe in the First Amendment.  The majority of us in this country still do! 

  • Cochfoo

    Of all the crap I’ve read on this topic, this is the most unintelligible bit of drivel out there. Emily, you may want to go read the Constitution of the United States and our Bill of Rights.

    It amazes me the people that don’t care about our freedoms being taken away because it is something for them. Emily wants free pills. Then go buy them. If you want your healthcare to buy them, your mom can get a job elsewhere. Instead, we’ll trample on our first amendment because (tears welling up) I want my free pills!!

    Idiots.

  • Guest

     So if they don’t want to offer coverage to veterans of Iraq because the Catholic Church opposed the Iraq War, would that be OK?  You don’t get to use your religious beliefs to ignore the law.

  • Guest

    I don’t know if Justice Scalia is conservative enough for you all – I sure hope so.  Here’s what he said in Employment Division v. Smith (1990):

    We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs [p879]
    excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting
    conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record
    of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts
    that proposition. As described succinctly by Justice Frankfurter in Minersville School Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 594-595 (1940):

    Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of
    the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from
    obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of
    religious beliefs. The mere possession of religious convictions which
    contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve
    the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities.

    (Footnote omitted.) We first had occasion to assert that principle in Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145
    (1879), where we rejected the claim that criminal laws against polygamy
    could not be constitutionally applied to those whose religion commanded
    the practice. “Laws,” we said,

    are made for the government of actions, and while
    they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may
    with practices. . . . Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary
    because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the
    professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land,
    and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.
     

  • Creative_destruction

    welcome to a world with out God.

  • Samloverzpie

    how is it that people can be so completely and utterly stupid? Birth control is used for more than just pregnancy protection. it is a woman’s right. if you have a pain, do you not take a medication to help? well. guess what. when girls get their periods, some are heavy, and they hurt, and we’re miserable for 3-9 days. or how about girls with irregular periods? i have them. i take birth control so i dont have to wonder if today is the day i bleed again. this isn’t a fight for religious freedom. this is a fight for women’s rights. is it so wrong to ask for something women should have had the option of receiving free to begin with?

  • Inuyashaluvr

    Well by that logic we should just allow men to beat their wives and adultery to be punishable by death because one religion says so. The constitution allows for freedom of individuals to practice their own religion, not to use it to trample on the rights of every single person who disagrees.

  • Anonymous

     I didn’t say god hates humanity. I said Organized Religion hates humanity. It’s ideals are opposite of human values. It enslaves us to vulgar hypocrites and their kin. Don’t let anyone tell you what god is. You have to decide that yourself.
    The Pope is a control freak who believes that every sexual experience should result in conception. Even if it means the death of the mother, infection with AIDS or abject poverty combined with a short lifespan for the child.

  • HERMAN CAIN / PIKACHU 2012

    “spiritual trauma”

    I have some crystals to sell you, I think your chakra is out of alignment.

  • Creative_destruction

    John 14:6 >>”Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

  • HERMAN CAIN / PIKACHU 2012

    I, too, can quote fiction.

    Ezekiel 23:20 >> “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.”