Some of the same old Catholic Bishops and their proxies are making a lot of noise about Obamacare's requirement that hospitals and schools cover contraception costs.
A batch of arch-bishops and Republican presidential primary panderers are whining about religious freedom. This is being covered as though it is a big deal by the mainstream media, even MSNBC, the supposedly liberal network, is just accepting the message as the promoters of the issue are framing it.
The truth is, there are a batch of bishops who will attack Obama and attack Democratic policies every chance they get. These chronically Obama-bashing bishops do not represent the majority of Catholics. EastMeadow Patch reports, " bout one-third of America's 50 million Roman Catholics -- more than 15 million -- attend Mass once a week, says William D'Antonio, a sociologist at the Catholic University of America . However, in recent polls, about 95 percent of Catholics have said they use contraceptives and 89 percent say the decision to use them should be theirs, not the church's, he says. ."
This is not an issue that will have a major effect on the election, except, perhaps, to energize women to stand up for their rights to control their bodies. It's old wine in a new bottle-- the Catholic Church trying a new approach to erode women's rights.
Presidential advisor David Axelrod commented, on MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning, " There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of women who work in these universities who are not Catholic," he said. "The question is whether they're going ... to have the same access to basic preventive care." That's the point. The insurance policy Obama is requiring does not force women to use birth control. It enables them to do so. For many years, I've believed that the pro-life movement is almost as rabid in its desire to take away contraception from women as it is interested in ending women's right to control their bodies in terms of abortion.
Katha Pollit, of TheNation, writes, " As if it had finally noticed that women out-number bishops, the Obama administration has decided against permitting religious organizations a broad exemption from rules requiring that all methods of contraception be covered, with no co-payment, by health insurance plans. Strictly religious organizations -- churches, missions and such -- will be exempt, but not universities, hospitals and charities. As a public health matter, this is excellent news: for women whose health plans don't cover birth control, it can be difficult to obtain and costs hundreds of dollars a year out of pocket."
Already, churches have been exempted. And these hospitals in question-- just the hospitals, not including universities or charities-- receive over $45 billion a year in funding. Some of these blustering bishops are threatening to drop health insurance altogether. How cruel and heartless can they get?
In 2008, 54% of Catholics voted for Obama. IN 2010, 54% of Catholics voted for Republicans (as did most demographics.) hysterical right wingers are comparing requiring insurance plans to cover contraceptives for women who chose to use them to 1930's Germany-- and network hosts who have these shills on the air are not challenging them.
You have to wonder. Why does the mainstream media give the Catholic Church's campaign so much attention? Qui Buono? Who benefits?
Thoughts?
flickr image By TheBlackHour.com
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
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