How hipocritical of the catholic church! Where was the bishops's outrage when children were being violated and priests, with the knowledge of many of these same bishops, were being shipped to other parishes? They are so very out of touch.

I do not think religious organizations or the government should dictate what a woman chooses for herself - whether it is contraception or anything else. If a person does not want to get pregnant, but is sexually active, she needs birth control. Unwanted babies suffer from neglect, and sometimes poverty. These are serious problems, and I don't see the Catholic church stepping in to raise these children.

The Church's position on contraception is the most morally reprehensible stance imaginable in the twenty-first century. To ignore the catastrophic danger of overpopulation and to deny women a safe and effective way to avoid unwanted pregnancies is the height of theological arrogance. Thankfully, millions of devout Catholics ignore the Church's teaching on this subject.

This women telling Carol that birth control is tantamount to clean air and water is just nuts. These Feminist are nut cases. This has nothing to do with birth control....It is pure Federal Big Gov't control I.E. this is what Obamacare will be and will become. Forget the self insured logic. It won't count when HHS and queen Bee Sebelius changes gear as she has total control. This whole thing by Obama is a lie and the S.O.B. knows it and he knows he will win. He does not care about the constitution PERIOD! He will crush us as he see's fit. Who wins and who loses is at his sole discretion. Scary but true.

I just want to know if male employees of Catholic organizations are covered for Viagra or Cialis prescriptions? Are those drugs morally acceptable? Did God say man must be able to impregnate a woman via unnatural medications? Women just want fair treatment and choices.

Get used to it -- Obamacare will trump everything, your religious freedoms, your freedom of conscience, your financial freedom, freedom of contract,and the US Constitution and force you to pay for anything King Barack likes whether you like it or not.

Regarding the gentleman representing the Catholic side, I understood his point until he repeatedly said, "You don't have to work at a Catholic Church if you don't like the position we've taken." That is nothing short of cold. Is he suggesting people should quit their jobs if they don't follow their hard line religious beliefs? He lost my respect with that attitude. They are disrespectful to women and their legal access to birth control. I believe he's afraid that many Catholic women would also like to have access to these basic contraception benefits. I don't believe the Catholics have a right to trump my legal rights over their own beliefs.

Yes women need access to contraceptives and no the Catholic church is not being forced to violate its principles under the policy put forth by Health and Human Services. Family planning is good public policy, advocating a policy that leads to unwanted pregnancies and abortions is not.

Contraception is being miss-labeled as preventative health care!

It is not health care of any kind!

Health care would be the prevention of disease, the treatment of disease, and the curing of disease. Disease is the malfunction of the body/mind or inability of the body/mind to act in a normal manner.

Contraception does not perform any of these functions. Contraception, in fact, CAUSES the body to malfunction. Shutting down a woman's or man's reproduction organs or keeping them from functioning in a normal way (they way they were meant to function) is the opposite of health care. It is poisoning the body for the purpose of providing people with a convenient lifestyle.

To say that contraception is a preventative medication is also to say that the creation of human life is itself a disease. It is not! The purpose of the reproductive organs is to reproduce life.

If people want to take pills or undergo other procedures to disconnect their bodily functions, that is their option. And if they want to pay for it, that is also their option. But don't call it preventative medicine or healthcare of any kind. It is an elective treatment that satisfies personal lifestyle decisions.

Neither healthcare insurance providers nor religious institutions should be required to cover this cost.

.

This argument has gone totally absurd. This issue is a total violation of First Amendment rights. There is no right to "free" contraception, sterilization, or abortion pills. As they are legal products, they can be bought. If there is an insurance benefit as the White House claims, then an enterprising insurance company will create an inexpensive product and fill the gap. Supplemental products are created all of the time. You want the CHurch out of your bedroom but the government in it? Are you nuts?

The rights of individuals to decide issues like family planning and contraception fortunately are paramount in the USA.
The Catholoic bishops need to brought into the 21st century. Practicing contraception is not considered immoral in our society. To think it is is absurd. This has been long ago decided in America. Furthermore, insurance benefits need to cover this expense regardless of where a person works. The longer the Catholic church focuses attention on this issue the more it looks irrelavent and out of touch with our society and out of touch with women's needs and their families. The dispute sure makes the case for unlinking medical insurance from employment and employers. Who of us in their right mind wants their employer to have the power to make one's insurance benefits comply with some archaic moral code that most of us do not believe in.

I do not believe that the church has any right to dictate what insurance benefits their employees receive. If one has a moral objection to obtaining birth control, then one should not get or use it. As the ACLU spokesperson stated: the church is receiving federal and state monies for their work, therefore it is a secular workplace. Conversely, if a person is a Catholic and working for AT&T, they do not have to avail themselves of the birth control options offered. The gentleman who represented the Catholic Church on your show made a dangerous point: if one were not agreeable, one would not have to work for that Catholic institution. Really? Where are you going to get all the medical workers, for instance, to staff your hospitals and nursing homes?

I'm not Catholic, but they are right on this one! Since when is poisening one's body so that it won't function properly a personal right that should be paid for by the health care insurance provider, the government, a business enterprise, or any other organization. Why doesn't the government allow people to take drugs to shut down other organs (the brain, the heart)? This is the question that no one seems to want to answer, because female voters are being pandered to here. They are being offered a lifesyle of convenience and irresponsibility and being told that it is the same as preventative medicine. Wake up ladies and gentlemen, this is not medicine, its poison! Pay for it yourself.

No. No woman has to work for a Catholic institution or go to a Catholic school. A bully is a bully, whether is is President or Pope and I wish the President would stop pontificating on his version of "right" and the church would display more compassion and common sense in the Catholic beliefs. However, this rule backs the church into a corner. Do they stop hiring and firing noncatholic people? Do they stop feeding and sheltering and caring for the hungry, poor and sick? Do they stop insuring all employees? Those are the choices left to them. Any other response will lose them more parishioners. What is worse than the Church in our sex lives is the Government getting in there too. The bedroom is getting much too crowded.

Having watched,read and listened to intellegent and otherwise discusions on this issue as a pro-choicer (NOT a pro- abortion) woman I remain in wait for any inclusion of men's birth control, ie vasectomy and whether covering the cost would be an issue but more importantly any mention of the fact that Obama's leadership has taken us to the natural and fair next step with womens health. This is NOT OBAMACARE as it is called but rather a collective and joint decision with women and men in leadership positions who realize that we are past the time when women should have a choice in their health care decisions.It is cost effective to offer birth control as has been mentioned often but more to my point the wait has been to hear that any women working for a Catholic or other organization offerring birth control, self insured or not is FREE TO REFUSE the birth control and that is the point. There exists choice. The goal is to prevent unwanted abortions. There are many women still afraid of health care organizations. How long will it take for these fears to abate? For the coat hangers to be really a thing of the past. For all income groups, races and ages regardless of who they work for and what their marital status or age.The goal as I see it is freedom and equality. Who is missing this?

If it wasn't so pathetic, it would be almost amusing to see how easily many Americans are willing to give up their freedoms - including relion - to a power-mad thug like Obama.

I am so sick of the catholic church trying to dictate to people what they can and cannot do when they have been historiocaly corrupt and neet to clean up their own back yard. Women have a right to do what is right for them, and yes should get and use contraceptives if they choose to do so. If this prevents unwanted pregnancies and abortions, then let it be. I applaud Pres. Obama for having the courage to take a stand on this age old and serious issue.

I was raised as a Catholic....or perhaps lowered. :-) Whatever. But seriously: I strongly disagree with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops statement, which denounces President Barack Obama's attempts at compromise as "needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions". On the contrary, the Bishops comments are themselves a needless religious intrusion upon the proper and legitimate functions of government...functions that serve to promote women's rights, equality, and fairness for ALL. No one is coming into our Churches and trying to tell parishioners what to believe. BUT If the Bishops want to start businesses that employ millions of people of varying faiths -or no "faith" at all- THEN they must play by the rules. Just because a religious group in America claims to believe something, we cannot excuse them from obeying the law in the PUBLIC arena, based on that belief. They can legally attempt to change the law, not to deny it outright. And if they want to plunge overtly into politics from the pulpit, then they should give up their tax-exempt status. Did I miss something, or when it comes to the "sanctity of life", is every single righteous Catholic still a card carrying conscientious objector, refusing to take up arms, totally against the death penalty, and against contraception in all its forms? Oh well, hypocrisy is at the heart of politics, and politics masquerading as religion even more so. This country is an invigorating mixture of all the diversity that life has to offer, drawing its strength FROM that diversity. We need to work together to preserve, enrich, and strengthen this unique experiment - NOT to tear it down with poisonous, paralyzing, and un-Christian demonization of each other.

The ruling about making insurance pay for birth control is not a religious issue. Insurance is not a matter of faith it is secular. Churches and their direct employees are exempt under the rule so there is no question about interference with the freedom of religion clause in the constitution. If the churches choose to engage in secular activity (such as self insuring their affliated employees) they are not acting as a church or a religion and are subject to all the laws and regulations that apply to similar secular organizations or businesses (i.e. insurance companies).

Also, the regulation only says that contraception should be included in the services covered by insurance - it in no way mandates or even suggests that any women take advantage of the coverage. It doesn't require that any institution, including charities or hospitals provide the service. So, while contraceptive services have to covered by insurance no woman has to (or is even encouraged to) take advantage of the coverage nor is any religious affiliated organization required to provide the service itself.

Personally, if I were a catholic woman I would be outraged at the bishops. What they are saying seems to translate into "we can't have contraception available to catholic women because they don't have the faith or will required to not use the service if it is covered". It is sad when a major religion feels it cannot trust its followers to be faithful. (It is unconstitutional if a major religion is trying to force their beliefs and rules on members of other religions with other views and beliefs.)

p.s. anyone who, in the current state of the economy and unemployment, says "then they should go work somewhere else" is just an out of touch idiot. people these days work anywhere they can if they are lucky enough to find a job at all. for many, there isn't any "somewhere else" available.

Are men entitled to coverage for the cost of viagra???

Overlooked in this discussion is the broad public dependence on Catholic institutions for a broad variety of human services, particularly in the fields of health care and higher education. If the church decides to close these institutions, public bodies would scramble to replace the services they provide, just as the public schools have struggled to serve those left high and dry when Catholic schools closed in huge number when they lost the free services of nuns.
This doesn't mean that government should buckle under to unreasonable demands, but it does mean that citizens should be aware of the consequences if government resists the bishops' blackmail.

Not to offer coverage is wrong. It isn't a reflection on the church, it is a reflection on the individual who is making that choice. I'm not sure why the church is trying to "control" people.

I really enjoy your program each day but enough about what Catholic bishops have to say about contraception. This is not 1955. Put this topic to rest already. There is massive national consensus on the importance of contraception, including the vast majority of Catholics.

If the Catholic Church does not want to treat its employees like Americans, rather slaves to the archaic teachings of their dying institution, why don't they renounce their tax exempt status? I would be happy to stop giving my tax dollars to religious institutions and have never understood how this is constitutional to begin with. If they want to keep harping on their 1st Amendment rights, why don't they ever bring this up? Why are Americans paying for the existence of religious institutions? And why, when the church leadership commits crimes against children, are they not subject to the same law authorities that citizens are? Instead, their cases go before the church first?

I hope their reaction to this raises some awareness of how our country needs to look at where we've gone wrong in letting religious institutions dictate our secular laws.

As a practicing Catholic, I often find myself disagreeing with the Vatican - and I personally disagree with the Church's stance on contraception. However, the current debate about whether or not a church affiliated organization should or should not offer a particular benefit to its employees smacks more of a constitutional issue about the separation of church and state than it does an individual's desire for contraceptive medication.

The Catholic Church has many faults. It is made up of human beings who are by nature not without faults. The rules and regulations are often difficult to understand or accept, but they are based on underlying belief that all life is sacred and sacrament to a loving God. Whether or not every member of the Catholic Church lives up to those values is moot. As Americans, do we always live up to the values and ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence? Hardly.

The Catholic Church, or any other employer for that matter, has the right to identify what benefits they will offer to their employees. If a religiously based organization chooses to offer certain benefits and not others based on a value system...that organization is within their rights both as a faith-based organization and as an employer. Individuals do not have the right to expect contraception as a civil right. It is not. Contraception is a personal choice. We do not have socialized medicine in the United States. Even under Obama Care, we do not have a public option.

Under Cardinal Cody, single teachers were not provided with any kind of gynocological care. It was one of the main reasons I stopped working in the Catholic School System. It was my choice to leave or stay. I left. If hospital employees- who have chosen to work in a Catholic health system - do not like the benefits they are offered - they have the same choice.

Finally, I believe that the Obama administration should carefully reconsider its stance regarding this issue. The separation of church and state is one of the big reasons people left Europe in the first place.

Carol Marin's discussion centered aroumd Women's Health, but there is another major issue and that is the use of Religious Freedom to justify forcing non Catholics to follow Catholic religious law. It is clear that Catholics who follow the teachings of their church have the right to refrain from using birth control in their own reproductive life. But reproductive lives of individual Catholics is much different than the personnel policies of Catholic institutions that perform purely secular functions. Catholic universities and hospitals perform secular functions and many of these institutions have large numbers of non Catholic employees, sometimes 50% or more. The church's position preventing these non Catholic employees from receiving company paid insurance for contraception supplies, is indeed the Catholic Church forcing their religious doctrine on the general non Catholic population even when performing a secular function. This is no different than the extreme Islamics who seek to force Sharia Law on an entire population who may be under their control. The Catholic Church's position is clearly the antithesis of Religious Freedom.

I don't care about someone else's sex life, but I shouldn't pay for it. This is just the tip of the iceberg that Slimebama is handing us with his healthcare. Crap healthcare for everyone, 20% unemployment (not 8.3, going to 50%) $4/gas (going to $6 this year — and he wants it!) and the important issue here is the erosion of our rights. Slimebama thinks we need more regulation in our lives. Thats not freedom. And this contraception issue isn't about a church, its about the Constitution.

I am a former Catholic who left the church over issues like contraception, the ordination of women, and the status of same-sex couples. It saddened me because the church's stance on the dignity of the poor, its opposition to war (sometimes, anyway), and its opposition to capital punishment have been a source of inspiration to me.
In my view, the church also does not get to pick and choose. If they want to participate in the public system, accepting tax subsidies for the services they provide, then they must follow the public rules. Students at Catholic universities receive federal funds, for example, and faculty members win federally-finded grants. If the Church is willing to accept this money, it must provide those students and faculty members the same benefits they would receive at a public or secular university.
One further point: there is a large group of people who violently oppose vaccination. They believe it causes autism. However, all insurance is, I believe, required to cover child vaccination. What if a religion decided that it bought the autism argument and chose not to cover vaccination? Is that too free speech? Or is it child murder?

[url=http://www.seoua.info/user/tesysona/ ]strattera[/url] propecia http://www.thelostculture.com/punbb-1.2.22/upload/profile.php?id=124360 comprare clomid [url=http://axyli.ru/user/faxTeara/ ]cialis[/url] wellbutrin http://ukrmir.org.ua/user/imafSymn/ cipro [url=http://forums.pikemasters.com/index.php?action=profile;u=183314 ]flagyl[/url] acquisto allegra-d http://ebooksplanet.net/user/Foekmeri/ acquistare zovirax senza ricetta [url=http://alterportal.ru/user/Vefhibre/ ]venda xenical brasil[/url] ordine kamagra senza prescrizione http://www.michaelgodardfans.com/member.php?u=4266 lexapro [url=http://www.ceedforums.com/index.php?action=profile;u=9017 ]propecia[/url] strattera http://www.ff4k.org/sm_forum/index.php?action=profile;u=186849 ordine cipro