Cross-posted from Bold Faith Type
By Tara Culp-Ressler
During last week’s House Committee on Oversight and Government hearing on religious freedom, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) posed a question to the witnesses about women who take oral contraceptives for purely medical reasons, such as those who need to mitigate their risk for ovarian cancer or blood clots.
Catholic Bishop William Lori responded that "our Catholic law of theology…recognizes that the same drug can be used for different purposes with different effects and our plans reflect that, so we should be given credit for the nuance and the understanding that we have already brought to the table."
That stands as an interesting contrast to the testimony of Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University Law School student who was prevented from speaking at last week’s hearing by Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) for supposedly being “unqualified.” Given a subsequent opportunity Wednesday at a special hearing convened by the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, Fluke relayed stories of her female classmates who have struggled to gain access to the health care that their medical conditions demanded under Georgetown’s insurance guidelines.
One of Fluke’s friends needed birth control bills to prevent ovarian cysts; as a self-identified lesbian, she was clearly not interested in the contraceptive purposes of the pill. However, despite a letter from her doctor detailing her medical needs, she was denied coverage under Georgetown’s plan and unable to afford the high cost of birth control pills on her own. As a result of stopping her treatment, she soon developed a massive cyst on her ovary and underwent invasive surgery to remove it – a surgery which may have compromised her ability to conceive later in life.
This isn't a small point. A staggering 95 percent of women who have used birth control pills report that they use the pill for reasons other than contraception, and 14 percent of women use birth control for purely medical reasons. For these women, access to contraception is not a theoretical debate about religion and politics, it’s a matter of critical health care.
Since, as Bishop Lori clearly articulated, the Catholic Church acknowledges there’s no controversy around providing contraceptive pills for medical needs that fall outside of the usual theological proscription, Catholic employers negotiating religious exemptions ought to do a better job ensuring their policies actually match this principle.
The credit Bishop Lori believes the Church deserves for this “nuance and understanding” should be reserved until these insurance plans actually put this into practice.