So yesterday an article by Dan Gilgoff appeared in the U.S. News World Report titled "Bishops Demand Universal Healthcare Without Abortion." Does anyone else see the irony in the U.S. bishops wanting to define universal health care as covering everything except for what they don't support? Under this theory, I suppose women are supposed to wait to see just exactly how the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops comes down on a variety of health care needs to understand what in fact will be considered universal. Since when does universal health care mean denying comprehensive reproductive health care supported by the majority of Americans?
Under a "God & Country" header, Mr. Gilgoff's article reports on the ongoing demands by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to eliminate the legally protected right to abortion from the American health care system, but doesn't bother to mention all the other positions of the U.S. Conference: the bishops agree with Pope Benedict that condoms can worsen the AIDS pandemic in Africa; that contraception should not be covered under most health plans and that it is not basic health care; and argue that emergency contraception will not reduce either the need for abortion or unintended pregnancy. Seems that, if the U.S. Conference had its way, the national health care system would make American women second-class citizens and deny them access to benefits they currently have.
The danger, of course, is not simply that the bishops are pushing to erode decades of legal access to contraception and abortion in America. Their hard-line opposition to women's rights also endangers millions of women around the globe -- where women also need universal health care access. The effort to criminalize access to safe abortion endangers most women in the developing world -- the very women that you would think the bishops would be concerned about. Each year, an estimated 19 million women -- primarily in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean -- resort to unsafe abortions. Globally, an estimated 68,000 women die each year as a consequence, and more than five million each year suffer temporary or permanent disability -- including the inability to have a future healthy pregnancy.
The root cause of unsafe abortion is unintended pregnancy, a result of the lack of affordable and accessible contraception for women. The correlation between higher contraceptive use and lower maternal mortality is well established.
We have an opportunity this year to fundamentally address serious health care issues for women and young people in America, and we stand ready to partner with President Obama and Congress to find solutions to our most pressing health care issues. The United States continues to have some of the highest rates of unintended and teen pregnancy among the world's most developed countries, and now epidemic rates of sexually transmitted infections among our teens. If we did our job right in expanding access to contraception, we'd see a lower abortion rate in America, just like in most other developed nations.
I'd welcome the bishops' commitment to focus on these "universal"' problems, rather than continue to fight to diminish a woman's right to make personal decisions that should be kept between her and her doctor.
We call upon Congress and the White House to continue to stand firmly on the side of women in health care reform. Women are needed to pass health care reform -- and we are not going backwards and we are not going away.
Follow Cecile Richards on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cecilerichards
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You cannot state that you are Christian or Religious and make an argument against giving women full control of her body. That is a denial of life. As for being Catholic, you can claim that, because they treat women as things, not human.
And, I argue that abortion is denial of life. Contracept
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I wouldn't be so proud to advertise that my god is a weak moronic jerk, is all I'm saying.
Harvard university came out with a study in 2008 showing that condom programs do not work for a variety of reasons in Sub Saharan Africa. They probably do work in educated, small western gay population
That isnt a bible thumping argument, its just a fact.
Secondly, Catholic countries in Subsaharan Africa, where condoms are not promoted have lower HIV rates that the Protestant
South Africa is 40% HIV positive but only 5% of SA's are Catholic and the country is very pro condom.
I'm familiar with Green's work at Harvard..a
Just a cursory glance at Wiki (his program was an ABC one. Condoms are the 'C'.)
"Green paraphrase
http://en.
This is an article in which Green explains in language that even HuffPoster
And about the ABC program that had so much success early in the AIDS pandemic in Uganda, it was because the leaders of the country insisted on Abstinence and Fidelity that it was successful
The statistics are also a bad comparison for the United States because it is not smart to compare health stats from third world countries with a first world country. Lets look at first world countries. Abortion is illegal in Ireland but Irish women have better maternal health and lower infant mortality for their babies than in Great Britain, next door.
Poland has a ban on abortion, and has far better maternal health than their culturally and economical
The fact is, it probably doesnt make a huge difference if abortion is illegal or not. On the one hand more women would have access to safe abortions, but on the other hand, since abortion becomes such a huge industry ( abortions rose from 700,000 per year soon after Rvs Wade to 1.5 million 5 years later) that the chances of complicati
Keeping abortion services legal can only increase the likelihood of a good outcome for a woman, While doctor training, social mores and funding are also big determinat
The world is not sustainabl
Where is your overpopula
What's wrong with that, you ask? Well, you liberals love for the state to pay for stuff. What happens when you have all these programs and you stop having kids, and the number of working taxpayers decline? Not to mention the anthropolo
Google demographi
Females who undergo an abortion are being responsibl
Wrong. You cannot state that you are Christian or Religious and make an argument against giving women full control of her body. That is a denial of life. As for being Catholic, you can claim that, because they treat women as things, not human.
As far as I am concerned, those who espouse such idiotic notions as put forth in Humane Vitae by ignoring the real world about them have no right to claim humanity, period. And I doubt that God would appreciate having His word and His love perverted this way.
To put it as simply as possible, the most basic human right is the right to not be killed by others. Most Catholics believe that human life begins when conception takes place. Granting that no woman should be forced to reproduce who doesn't want to (through something like forced impregnati
I know a lot of women will howl with fury at what I'm about to say, and I know why, but what a massive political realignmen
Think about it for a moment....
You're a man, you have absolutely no say in the matter. Until you can get pregnant shut up! I would really like to see what you would do after you were brutally raped and have that monsters see inside of you!
I've seen/heard a lot of cruel things said in my time but that is the sickest.
Eunice Kennedy who just died, remained a pro life supporter to her death, signing petitions and even full page ads on the matter.
The Church might seem to be opposed to sexuality, but, in truth, it stands opposed to the mistreatme
And, as a culture, if you are not working towards the preservati
If we are a wold that embraces and allows for humanity to be denied life then we should justly anticipate that humanity can be denied an after life. And, if we willing destroy lives by the most heinous means possible then isn't it justifiabl
There is some debate as to what exactly is the unforgivab
Coinciding with the populariza
1. Original Man was made in the image of God.
2. Eve, the original woman, was created from the Original Man. This formation altered the image of Original man. He, alone, would no longer be the image of God, but, rather They together provide the image of God.
3. God is made up of 3 persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). It is understood that the love generated between the Father and the Son created the third person (The Holy Spirit).
4. Human sexuality, intercours
5. Because God is made up of 3 persons then likewise the image of God would present 3 persons (Man, Woman, and child).
6. Any interferen
So, birth control, in any form, denigrates human sexuality into a selfish and animalisti
It's one thing if the mother's life is in danger, and there is much controvers
so if "woman's health care" is "universal
I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. ~Ronald Reagan, quoted in New York Times, 22 September 1980
And I put abortion in the category of getting a nose jobs and breast implants.
It's not the same as a hip replacemen
The pro-abort lobby has never given an inch on any limits -- and so it is used 99% of the time for convenienc
Don't stand up for abortion stating the life of the mother....