Rick Santorum: birth control ruling has nothing to do with women’s rights
Forcing religious organizations to provide contraceptives has nothing to do with women’s rights, Republican presidential contender and vocal Catholic Rick Santorum said on Thursday.
The comment aligned Santorum with a lineup of conservative critics bashing Democratic President Barack Obama’s rule requiring religious institutions — but not churches — to provide health insurance plans that cover birth control.
The rule, announced in January, covers religious-affiliated groups like charities, hospitals and universities. The Catholic Church opposes most methods of birth control and conservatives have painted the rule as an attack on religious freedom from a secular president.
Speaking to CNN’s John King, the former Pennsylvania senator said: “That’s the Church’s money, and forcing them to do something that they think is a grievous moral wrong. How can that be a right of a woman? That has nothing to do with the right of a woman.”
Santorum bills himself as the only true conservative in the field of Republicans vying to win their party’s nomination to challenge Obama in November. He’s backed by evangelical leaders and social conservatives who admire his consistent and at times polemical stances on abortion and gay marriage. He swept nominating contests Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado on Tuesday buoyed by votes from social conservatives.
Better than expected economic news and the administration’s move, which was initially viewed as a score for women’s health advocates, have shifted the conversation of an election that most believed would be centered on the economy.
Conservative heavyweights including House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Texas Governor Rick Perry and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich have all warned of an attack on religious freedom coming from the White House. Obama also risks losing the votes of Catholics of whom he won 54 percent in 2008. On Thursday, the administration back-pedalled from its position, promising room for compromise but the groundwork for the attacks seems to have been laid.
Some U.S. health insurers deny coverage to abuse victims, White House notes
In eight U.S. states and the capital, Washington, D.C., being beaten by your spouse or domestic partner can be deemed a “pre-existing condition” that a company can legally use as a reason to deny health insurance coverage. Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to President Barack Obama, raised the issue in a web chat making the White House’s case for healthcare reform on Monday.
“In some states if you have been a victim of domestic violence, you can be considered as having a pre-existing condition,” Jarrett said as she hosted the chat on the White House website and on the Facebook social networking site, taking questions on an array of issues, many having to do with healthcare issues faced by members of minority groups.
Some of the participants in the webcast responded by posting outraged notes after she said it.
“We need your engagement, we need your involvement,” Jarrett said, urging chat participants to get involved in the reform push. “… It is extremely important that we have this passed and on the president’s desk this year.”
The National Women’s Law Center said eight states — Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wyoming and Idaho — and the U.S. capital city allow insurers to deem being a domestic violence survivor a “pre-existing condition.” The center also notes that the list of such conditions, for which women can be denied coverage, in some states also includes pregnancy or having had medical treatment following a sexual assault.
The White House has been staging events targeting a variety of audiences to make its pitch for an overhaul of the massive U.S. healthcare system. On Thursday, for example, Obama addressed small business owners and officials from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce business group. Jarrett’s chat on Monday seemed to target a younger audience. And on Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Small Business Administration Administrator Karen Mills were to meet with small business owners in Washington in an event also to be streamed on the Internet.
Denial of coverage to people who are sick, or have been sick — i.e. those whom insurers deem to have pre-existing conditions — is one of many emotional issues in the healthcare debate and health insurance companies have been a favorite target for many advocates of reform.
Should we women be be surprised, as second-class citizens in America, that these eight states deny women the insurance coverage they have a human right to? Church policnies dictate candidate choices and it neighbor angainst neighbor constantly in most of the states listed where your religion is your personal calling card. People, especially women, live in fear for their safety and even their own gender try to take their rights awaythrough the pulpits of male-based organized religion, while women in these churches stand by acting helpless and submissive.
Our country doesn’t do a much better job of unholding women’s rights than third-word countries, so where is civilization heading-backwards? That’s where the men of these eight states would surely love to take everyone.
Religion should stay out of the way of a woman’s right to control her reproductive organs and stop putting women at the mercy of men, criminal or otherwise. We are NOT living in ancient times but rather science-based times of knowledge and understanding regarding individual rights, or so American Patriots like to claim.
As Chris Rock stated not long ago on the Jay Leno Show, ”
If we caught Osama Ben Laden, we would execute him, not rape him-that would be barbaric!” Think about that. Our prisoners have more rights than women in our society have and something is terribly wrong with that.
Keep your religious beliefs to yourself and out of the laws of the land, As a matter of fact, we women should be demanding that all states in this country have one health insurance mandate: to provide full healthcare and full health insurance to women equally, as the majority of states now uphold.
How’s this for an attack on the church? I want to remove their tax-exempt status. If they want to involve themselves in politics rather than focusing on their stated mission to save souls, thar’s just fine with me. Let’s tax them. On any given Sunday, and this holds true for the mega-fundamentalist churches more than any, most of the “sermon” is instruction on the joys of the Republican Party and the tragedy of allowing the Democrates to grant more freedoms to more people who don’t happen to hold with the Conservative Rights oppressive social agenda. Fine but that’s not the reasons given to justify tax-exemption. I am so sick of the churches duplicity and wonder what Christ thinks about their message of exclusion and ill-disguised Hate.