One Year Forward, Fifty Years Back

Alas, it appears that we are to ring in the New Year with a step to the past. For just before the clocks moved into the midnight hour, the Supreme Court halted a mandate granting a woman the right to contraception coverage under her insurance. In essence, the Supreme Court has deemed the claimed “moral” recognition of religious institutions to trump a woman’s individual right to govern her own life and body. I think on this and there are a great many ways this whole thing can be argued. One can argue the unfairness that there is no other area in which a company or institution has the right to dictate individual freedom of one’s own person. But, it must also be made clear that this applies solely to the female of our species. No such mandate exists limiting the coverage of medications or procedures that affect a man’s sexual performance, viability or freedom. Men do not have to prove the reason they need any medication that can be an aid or limit to virility. They don’t need the permission of their employer. They don’t need to check with the hospital moral codes. If their doctor sees fit to hand them the prescription, that is all they need to obtain their pills. And the assurance that their insurance will cover it. There is so much irony in this massive effort to restrict the rights of women in such a way. Most of the money and fight has come from the same groups of people that have cried foul at every attempt to restrict any limit on such areas as gun ownership, even the most reasonable ones of simple background checks. I actually find this concept very disturbing. The right to own an instrument of destruction is a personal right, yet the right of a woman to control her body are dismissed by those same courts as secondary to the wishes of the corporation that signs her paycheck or the hospital that accepts the funds from her insurance, even if it covers her prescription. I wrote a piece on this same thing last year called the Company Store. It is still the best example I can think of from the viewpoint of an employer’s stand on this. In no other area would we sit quietly by and allow our employer to dictate to us how we can or cannot spend our compensation for our work. The primary win that was achieved with Roe vs. Wade was in my eyes, the right that my medical decisions are between me and my doctor. That if my doctor agrees with and is in compliance with my decision, that is all that matters. If my insurance covers birth control for any disorder or condition, then that medication is covered. To ask an employee, patient to petition or give notice or request permission from their employer or pharmacy or hospital the exact reason a covered medication is being prescribed is a violation of their rights to privacy. If one were asked to make such pleas for any other covered expenditure would start a firestorm of patient rights violations. It is a violation not only of one’s medical history, but also of one’s sex life. Neither of which are anyone’s business but the individual’s. We pay into our insurance, whether it be direct payment to the insurance company, partial payment through our employer with the balance being part of our compensation package. And that compensation package is just as much a part of our “pay” as our paycheck. Once earned, it is ours to do with as we wish. To spend in whatever means we desire. We can buy what food we want, patronize what stores we wish, engage in what entertainment we prefer. And worship any God we wish or even none if that is our choice. And where do the rights of the hospitals and the business owners fall in all of this? I believe that religious groups do have some rights, but those rights are restricted to within their religious community. That when they venture out into the secular community and engage with that community, they can hold to their beliefs so long as they do not extend them to restricting the rights of those they serve. If a hospital owned by a church accepts government subsidies and grants, contracts from private insurance companies, then they must accept that they are treating the secular community that may or may not hold to the same morals as they do. Only if they close their doors to all but their own congregates, receive no funds aside from their church can they hold any argument to those rights. Then it needs to be taken to the next level. If allowed to refuse to administer birth control because it is against their “belief”, what is next? The gay man with AIDS they feel is an abomination? Any person of a different belief, lifestyle, color? There was a time when they could make such distinctions in whom they treated, and how they were treated. Its one of those things the Civil Rights Movement fought so hard to change. And now we are allowing a backward step. Medicine is governed by science and belongs in the hands of science, not religion. Women have moved forward these last decades because science has allowed them the freedom to choose when to have children. It has given them the chance to hold off, get their degree, find their place in the world. And the result is that the wage gap has decreased. There are fewer teenage pregnancies where options are easy access. They graduate high school, college in record numbers. They have grown stronger, smarter, better equipped. Women have fought probably the longest battle to independence. Are still fighting it. We have shed blood, blood from the fights and blood as only women can shed. We alone have earned the right to decide the matters of our body. The realm of religion is the church. Preach it there, live it there, teach it there. It belongs no where else. SephiPiderWitch 01/01/2014