NJ Truthiness Watch — Women’s Health Care is Not Important Unless Men Say It Is
The editorial in Saturday’s NJ does a couple of dumb and dangerous things in siding with the religious leaders who have been howling about the Obama Administration’s ACA rule that religious institutions need to provide contraceptive coverage to their female employees as part of a preventative care package. This isn’t the first time that the NJ editorial has been quick to join the war on women’s health care. And as usual, the NJ editorial staff doing the writing of this thing never bothered to inform themselves of the facts of this business and pretty much just repeat what they see on cable TV.
What is really dumb about this editorial is that it picks up the media narrative that the Obama Administration somehow “stumbled” in making women’s contraceptive coverage mandatory for religious institutions. And be clear that we are talking about the colleges, the universities, the hospitals and other organizations that work in our communities, and most likely with a river of Federal dollars. Churches that employ mostly people who follow that religion were exempt. Got that? The other thing that has been tough to hear in the reporting on this is that religious institutional have been living with similar rules in the 28 states where the same contraceptive coverage is mandatory. And in other instances, they’ve been living with Title VII requirements against sex discrimination that means that if you provide coverage of prescription drugs and preventative care, you can’t exclude birth control. Here’s the roundup of this situation from the Guttmacher Institute. (pdf) Even better, Think Progress rounds up some of the major Catholic institutions that do provide contraceptive coverage — coverage that they could get around by self-insuring or eliminating their prescription drug coverage — but who have found reasons to abandon their “religious liberty” to comply with local law. NPR finally got around to a good story on this Friday AM.
It isn’t a “stumble” to do what the majority of states already do. More importantly, it isn’t a “stumble” to craft policy that fairly and clearly benefits the health of women. And it has been telling that male pundits all over have been pushing this narrative — even the normally astute E. J. Dionne. President Obama and his staff crafted a policy that lets female employees of any institution make their contraceptive choices in accordance with their own needs and their own faith.
Making sure that the freedom of female citizens of this republic is preserved — and that those same citizens are free to accommodate their faith needs in that decision — is crucial and right (and certainly not a “stumble”). Asking those same citizens to subordinate those decisions to those of people who have no business invoking politics to enforce their “religious conscience” on anyone — this isn’t Iran yet, you know — would have been the real crime here. So let’s take a good look at this bit of tone-deafness from the NJ:
Access to birth control is a positive health benefit and therefore a public good. However, so is freedom of conscience. Our polarized society seems more willing today to disregard other people’s principles. Good political leadership would navigate those polls and extend the benefits as far as possible.
See what is wrong with this? The NJ would have you believe that there is some competition between a church’s conscience and the freedom of women to manage their own lives. Any church will work to ensure that the people who adhere to that religion live their lives within its precepts. But they don’t get to do that to the rest of us. Making sure that the coverage is available does not make practicing Catholics suddenly start taking contraceptives. It leaves the choice of living with Church teaching to its women, and respects the religious and conscience choices of the women who are not practicing Catholics. The needle is nicely threaded here — it puts the business of conscience exactly where it belongs, with women, and it leaves the business of church doctrine exactly where it belongs — between a priest and his congregants.
So the question really is — do you side with the churches and GOP who think they should be in charge or determining the contours of women’s health care, or do you side with those who think that women should decide the contours of their own health care?
No church should be asking the government to be their enforcer. Any church that is claiming “religious conscience” to invoke brute enforcement of its teachings by a government who should not be doing this is a church that has been losing the battle of the teaching for some time. (And is evidenced by the fact that the Catholic Church is already complying with these contraceptive rules in many places.) Church leaders are playing politics here — and playing politics with the lives of women. They are betting (as does the NJ editorial crew) that this is a society that won’t notice that they are trying to subordinate the liberty of women to their own narrow views of the world. It is the business of government to ensure that Liberty for All includes its women — and the Obama Administration’s rule that contraceptives be covered by all except for a narrow group — does that.
Tags: News Journal, Republican War On Women, The News Journal, Truthiness
Once again we have a bunch of old white men and a few black men attempting to hold women down. This is the same group that for years protecting child molester
“The NJ would have you believe that there is some competition between a church’s conscience and the freedom of women to manage their own lives.”
i thought that was the very point of organized religion
Once again we have a bunch of old white men and a few black men attempting to hold women down.
The News Journal’s editorial staff consists of one white man and one black woman.
I suspect that TT wasn’t referring to the NJ in his comment, but to the so-called church leaders who have gotten their political knickers in a twist on this thing. But TT can speak for himself here.
Over at dKos, the ever essential Armando makes a similar argument against E. J. Dionne’s column of 29 January and makes that argument better than I ever could.
Armando is correct. Now the bishops and Republicans want no one receiving contraceptives through their employer’s insurance. I am stunned. Look, I’ve always known the “pro-life” argument was really about controlling women. I just never thought they’d be so honest about it, and they’d be willing to wage this battle so publicly… during an election year.
PP polling has some stunning results . this is driving numbers to the President big time. The bishops have no control of rank and file Catholics. This ,messy as it is, is a Boon to the Dems
i WA REFERRING TO THE OLD MEN IN THE RED CAPS
BUT ON A SADDER SIDE A LITTLE RAY OF HOPE IN RESPECT TO WHAT HAPPEN TO WITNEY TRY THIS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOfKAPGfd6k
sorry about the caps
Here is PPP’s polling on this issue that JPConnorjr references.
just never thought they’d be so honest about it, and they’d be willing to wage this battle so publicly… during an election year.
Next they’ll be calling for the works of Galileo to be placed on the Index of Prohibited Books again.
Not only was the earth not the center of the universe buy could this be a new rendition of the Spanish inquisition?? To quote Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady
Great point about the NJ editorial bard outsourcing their “thinking” to the tv talking heads. It is interesting because I saw the Chris Barrish billboard on 95 and it looks like they are saying that content matters.
Maybe I’m reading too much into one billboard? It is not like Gannett gives a flying fuck about content.
Indeed, Rhonda Graham penned a Friday op-ed [against requiring church-affiliated schools, etc., to provide contraception] that was so bad that it required two corrections on Saturday.
Last week, Gannett offered buyouts to virtually everyone in their community news division who is over 56 and has more than 20 years of experience. They will approve up to 665 buyouts with 785 people eligible. (In other words, more than 80 percent of this group may well disappear.)
Don’t hold me to their ages, but those eligible at the NJ most likely include Barrish, Beth Miller, Jeff Montgomery, Molly Murray, John Sweeney, robin brown, Eric Ruth. The knowledge these people have of Delaware is incredible. If any combination of that group leave simultaneously, we are all the worse off for it (even if we’re not in love with what Sweeney puts on the editorial pages).
And how embarrassing to them if they have to take down the Barrish billboards. On the other hand, other than the expense, would they care?
Imagine if they had put Livengood up:)
If they had put Livengood up, Barrish’s response would have been heard all the way from Creekwood to Lewes.
mediawatch – As Jim Hopkins’ GannettBlog has reported, only 22 people at the entire paper have been offered the buyouts, and they’re only accepting 8. Those buyouts are for all divisions – pressroom, circulation, advertising, marketing, IT, etc. So it’s a very, very remote possibility that more than one or two people from the newsroom will be leaving.
Also, some of the people you mentioned are not eligible because they’ve not yet hit that magic age – though they have the years.
anon: You’re showing your age. Of those named, only Eric Ruth hasn’t reached the magic number, and he’s getting close.
To those who speculate when they could just pick up the phone and ask or check my Facebook page, I’m 53 years young. Not old enough for the buyout, but thanks for caring.
Cris is well under 56
Maybe so, but he’s on the list of people who received the offer, so maybe the age requirement is lower. He can’t be much younger, though. He got there after college in 1980, so he has to be at least 53 or 54.
John M, I just saw Graham’s editorial column and boy what a mess it is. It doesn’t even attach itself to much of the CW — Santorum didn’t win because the pro-lifers came out in droves, he won those states because he was about the only one doing any work in them. Sheesh.
She makes a point about the majority of catholic women using contraception and that is expected in a democracy. But she spends her entire space here privileging the rights of churches and church leaders over the rights of women who vote and pay taxes. I suspect that this knee jerk genuflecting in the way of church leaders having a fit is a generational thing. Or a thing of Democrats who are scared of the religious world. But none of these so-called pundits have done the work of accommodating the taxpaying women in this equation whose rights to order their lives in accordance with their beliefs and needs continually gets short shrift. And that is dead wrong, no matter how you cut it.
But worse is how she moves into an argument about access to abortions, which isn’t even the argument here. It is about covering contraception, which is a different thing. But way to signal your own issues, Ms. Graham.
Cris wasn’t at NJ in 1980. And he was still in college in 1982.
The memory must be going. I thought he was in the same crop of sports part-timers as Beth Miller and Eric Ruth.
I’ve also heard that Barrish is on contract, not a regular employee.
Geez,
You may be thinking of Jim Grant, Paul Clark’s current voice. He came through Sports around that time.