It seems that Missouri’s Rep. Billy Long (R-7) and a group of fellow congressional freshmen gathered with reporters to warn of a grave threat to liberty: contraception. According to CNSNews.com (an entity that, incidentally, brings us the “news that the liberal media are hiding”), Long waxed uncharacteristically eloquent on the theme that when women get free contraception, “we’re still home of the brave, but we’re not the land of the free anymore”:

Long said, “America 2012.  Land of the free, home of the brave.  Are we still the land of the free and home of the brave? Let’s examine that for just a minute. I know we’re the home of the brave because if we walk off that House floor five days a week, three or four days, they’ll be a wounded warrior sitting there just like the one that was there yesterday.”

“He had no right arm, he had no left arm except for an artificial arm and an artificial hand, he was proud to shake my hand, with his artificial hand to show me how it worked,” Long said.  “He had no legs below the thighs.  His wife was standing next to him with less than a 1-year-old child in her hands.”

“You don’t have to worry about the brave,” he said. “We’re still home of the brave, but we’re not the land of the free anymore. And we need to get that straight.

“When you’re not free to practice religious freedom in this country, what in the world have we come to?” said Long. “Seriously, goodness gracious.”

Goodness gracious indeed. Where is H.L. Mencken when we need him. (Mencken did offer an apt observation about the birth control wars of his day: “It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.”)

As I indicated earlier, the occasion for this diatribe was simply the old news that under Obamacare, insurers must, starting yesterday, offer women a full range of reproductive health services. Billy and friends, of course, focused on the services CSNNews.com characterizes as “sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortifacients” – the last, of course, a bit of overreach in order to pander to those folks who think a single fertilized cell should have full human rights.

What’s actually going on here that’s got Billy so exercised?

I used to get insurance through my employer in order to take advantage of the economies of scale.  My employer paid for part of the coverage, and every year sent me a statement showing what my actual salary was when the money diverted to benefits like insurance coverage was added in. The fact that insurance paid for by employers is simply another form of income came up during the the debate over Obamacare, and centered on whether or not these diverted wages should be taxed as income.

Now, a group of Republican congressmen think that employers with certain types of religious beliefs have the right to impose those beliefs on American women and tell them what services they can and cannot purchase with the money they earn and that their employers divert from their salaries for insurance. And they call this religious freedom.

Somebody ought to break it to these folks that freedom’s a bigger issue than making political hay out of the hissy fits of our more authoritarian religious leaders. Margaret Sanger, the birth control pioneer and founder of Planned Parenthood, understood that one person’s freedom cannot be another’s subjugation:

Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man’s attitude may be, that problem is hers — and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.

Sarah Steelman got an ad out all about the affront to religious freedom and how McCaskill and Obama are bad by proxy. (Check the news if you have somehow missed the nontroversy from last week).

When it comes to matters of Sarah Steelman and the current outrages of the 2012 Republican party, you need to check the record to see what happened in the past.

Back in 2001.. HB762 was moving through the Senate. The National Conference of State Legislatures describes the bill/law as follows:

Mo. Rev. Stat. § 376.1199 (2001) requires health carriers that provide pharmaceutical coverage to include coverage for contraceptives, excluding drugs and devices that are intended to induce an abortion. The law clarifies that coverage for prescriptive contraceptive drugs or devices is not excluded if prescribed for other diagnosed medical conditions. The law exempts specified insurance policies, including health carriers owned and operated by religious entities, from the provisions of the law. The law prohibits discrimination against an enrollee because of the enrollee’s request regarding contraceptive coverage. The law requires carriers to maintain the confidentiality of any individual’s request for contraceptive coverage. (HB 762)

Essentially this law is the “good kind” of birth control coverage in the eyes of the 2012 Republican Party, right? After all, it has exemptions for religious groups and it’s not the kind of coverage that spawns Sarah Steelman attack ads.

Actually, that stand seems to be to the left of the current 2012 Republican stance, judging by the whole matter of Roy Blunt trying to put a “Freedom of Conscience” amendment up to allow employers to opt-out of contraceptive coverage.

This sort of thing did come up in 2001.

John Loudon offered an amendment to the bill to make birth control coverage optional in the law. The vote on the amendment was 25-8 against.

The Ayes were John Cauthorn, Doyle Childers, Bill Kenney, Peter Kinder, David Klindt, John Loudon, Larry Rohrbach, and Morris Westfall.

The overall bill passed 153-0 in the House and 32-2 in the Senate (Loudon and Rohrbach opposed).

That Was Then.

We know that 2012 Sarah Steelman is all about the religious freedom. What about the Blunt Amendment? What about the concept of making contraceptive coverage optional?

Sarah Steelman to Claire McCaskill on Twitter: “are you going to sign on to @royblunt S1467 to protect rights of conscience or is 1st amendment meaningless to you? #mosen #tcot”

S1467 CRS Summary:

Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011 – Amends the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) to permit a health plan to decline coverage of specific items and services that are contrary to the religious beliefs of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan or the purchaser or beneficiary (in the case of individual coverage) without penalty.  Declares that such plans are still considered to: (1) be providing the essential health benefits package or preventive health services, (2) be a qualified health plan, and (3) have fulfilled other requirements under PPACA.

Declares that nothing in PPACA shall be construed to authorize a health plan to require a provider to provide, participate in, or refer for a specific item or service contrary to the provider’s religious beliefs or moral convictions. Prohibits a health plan from being considered to have failed to provide timely or other access to items or services or to fulfill any other requirement under PPACA because it has respected the rights of conscience of such a provider.

Prohibits an American Health Benefit Exchange (a state health insurance exchange) or other official or entity acting in a governmental capacity in the course of implementing PPACA from discriminating against a health plan, plan sponsor, health care provider, or other person because of an unwillingness to provide coverage of, participate in, or refer for, specific items or services.

Creates a private cause of action for the protection of individual rights created under this Act. Authorizes any person or entity to assert a violation of this Act as a claim or defense in a judicial proceeding.

Designates the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to receive and investigate complaints of discrimination based on this Act.

Makes this Act effective as if it were included in PPACA.

Oh, That Is Now. Isn’t It.

It’s good to be able to appreciate my Democratic Senator, Claire McCaskill, after feeling compelled to scold her in the past; it’s too bad, though, that her good qualities are being thrown into relief so sharply by comparison to the lame behavior of her GOP counterpart, Roy Blunt.

In my last post about McCasikill, I observed that, given her excellent response to the Komen brouhaha and her vote against an FAA authorization bill that contained anti-union provisions, she might be starting to act like a Democrat again after a long period spent wandering around on the right side of Centerville. No sooner said, than she comes through one more time. Here (from the Kansas City Star via the National Journal) is McCaskill’s response to the Obama administration’s new rule that widens access to contraception:

This is an emotional, difficult subject. It’s always one that’s difficult. But if you really believe that reducing abortions are important in this country, which I do, then it doesn’t work to keep putting up barriers to women getting birth control.”

“As someone who believes very much that we should be preventing abortions, I think we should try very hard to give women universal access to birth control without going into their pockets,” she also told reporters this week.

To be sure, the National Journal acknowledges the political expediency which is usually a given with most politicians:

Politically, McCaskill’s positioning makes sense. If she were to take a stand against the president on the issue, she would risk alienating her Democratic base, whom she needs to turn out in strong numbers come the fall.

And it’s absolutely true – Claire has done much to alienate her base and she can’t afford to waffle on progressive fundamentals now. But she’s also a Catholic and it takes guts to signal one’s intellectual independence when the hierarchy is not only up in arms, but is determined to go nuclear. It also, as the writer hints, takes guts to get the President’s back when he comes under sustained fire:

It’s also consistent with McCaskill’s overall strategy, which has been to not run away from the president at every single opportunity.

In Missouri, where Tea Partyesque vilification of Obama began almost as soon as he was elected (although his ratings are now improving), this is not trivial. In fact, the generally fearful strategy that characterizes so many centrist Democrats, would likely have dictated the opposite response.

And in case you think that I’m giving McCaskill too much credit, here’s what her GOP opposite number, Roy Blunt, had to say about requiring that legal contraception be included in women’s preventive healthcare:

The Obama administration’s recent decision is offensive to Americans’ religious rights and freedoms.

In an act of major self-indulgence prompted by my fury at this type of dishonest misdirection, I wrote a massive post yesterday outlining why I think it’s wrong to talk about “religious rights and freedoms” in this context, so I’ll say no more here. But I will note that Blunt’s remarks are no more than the insult that is often added to injury:

Blunt and others said they will try to overturn the regulation. Last year, Blunt introduced a measure that would allow any health insurance plan “to decline coverage of specific items and services that are contrary to the religious beliefs of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan, or the purchaser or beneficiary, without penalty.”

Blunt’s bill remains in committee, as does a companion bill in the House. U.S. Reps. Sam Graves and Vicky Hartzler of Missouri, and U.S. Rep Lynn Jenkins of Kansas – all Republicans – are co-sponsors of the bill.

So, when you’re thinking about how pure you want to be come election time, just remember there are folks out there, like Blunt, who want to restrict access to birth control, and there are others, like McCaskill, who have shown that they will stand up to them in order to make sure that we all have easy access to the full-range of preventive medicine.

Via a pastoral letter, Archbishop Robert Carlson has formally added his name to the roster of American Catholic heavyweights who oppose the Obama administration’s new rule that would widen access to contraception. He claims he is doing so in the name of “rights of conscience.” The Missouri legislature is also jumping into the fray because “religious groups should not have to pay for birth control or abortions for their employees if that would violate their beliefs.” Specifically, GOP Senator Scott Rupp “introduced a measure Tuesday to amend the state’s constitution and forbid state laws or rules that force an individual, employer or health care provider to cover the costs of birth control or abortions.”

All this gum-flapping on the topic of “conscience” and “religious freedom” leaves me with few questions and observations:

— Does this rule force anyone to buy or use contraception?  

— Does this rule force any specifically religious organization staffed by members of the church in question to field health care plans that cover contraception?

— Does anything in the new rule, Senator Rupp, mention abortion or even drugs such as the morning after pill (RU486)?

— Are any insurance providers required to provide coverage for contraception?

The answer in all cases is emphatically no.

The new rule does, though, require that contraceptives be included in insurance plans offered by religiously-affiliated organizations with a non-religious mission that employ individuals who are not necessarily members of the affiliated churches. If such organizations do not comply, they stand to forfeit federal funds or tax credits. The argument offered by the Archbishop and by Senator Rupp is that, by offering such a health care plan, the church in question is being forced to indirectly subsidize (horror of horrors) contraception. That this reasoning is, at the very least, questionable is obvious when one considers a number of questions that it gives rise to:

— Don’t many of these religiously affiliated organizations derive income from public payments for services they render, or from the federal government? So why are the churches carrying on like they bear the brunt of paying for the health care these institutions provide their employees and, in the case of colleges and universities, students.

— The whole issue of indirect culpability is problematic. For instance, if a religiously affiliated hospital were to have saved the life of Hitler – knowing that he was was in the process of instituting the final solution – is the affiliated church indirectly responsible for Hitler’s crimes? If so, should the doctors have let Hitler die? Or, perhaps, even hasten his death? You can, doubtless come up with numerous parallel if less extreme examples. (I only mention Hitler because already some right-wing fools have predictably started comparing the new rule to the rise of the German Nazis. We can all play at rhetorical overkill.)

— How expansive should arguments about rights of conscience be? What about a religious businessman who thinks contraception is the devil’s tool and  wants his business to be granted the same religious exemption the churches are demanding in order to curtail his female employees’ access to birth control?

— To narrow the frame of reference of the question above, why are some religions and religious issues privileged over others? As Katha Politt puts it in regard to Catholic opposition:

Are Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other pacifists exempt from taxes that pay for war and weapons? Can Scientologists, who abhor psychiatry, deduct the costs of the National Institute of Mental Health?

— Should conscience rights take precedence over public welfare? Certainly, the courts don’t always think so. Consider, for instance, the Supreme Court decision that found polygamy illegal because it was successfully argued not to be in society’s interests.  

— What about the right of non-believing employees to be free from religiously motivated interference in their personal lives, “freedom from religion” if you will, which is arguably implicit in the construct “freedom of religion”?  Senator Rupp and the Archbishop would, presumably, answer that such individuals are free not to seek employment at religiously affiliated institutions. In a time of massive unemployment, most of us can readily see that this response is both callous and unrealistic, and, even from the point of view of the institutions in question, would lead to undesirable consequences.

Actually, to get an idea about why this argument fails, just turn the tables. If the issue is really one of conscience, aren’t religiously affiliated organizations free to give up the federal funds that are tied to their compliance with the rule? No fuss, no bother. One could even argue that it hardly behooves tax-exempt organizations like churches to take taxpayer dollars in the first place. Conscience does not operate in a vacuum.

— To take the question of rights one step further yet, what about the conscience rights of women to plan their families for the benefit of their children? Why should Archbishop Carlson’s Catholic conscience rights have more standing than that of an agnostic nurse in a Catholic hospital?

— If the issue is so pressing that the august leaders of the Catholic Church and GOP lawmakers have to leap in wearing their heavy stomping boots, why have religiously affiliated organizations, such as, for instance, Depaul University, Boston College and Caritas Christi Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts, been willing to offer their employees, without handwringing and undue melodrama, insurance plans that cover contraception? Several states, in fact, have enacted similar mandates:

Over half of Americans already live in the 28 states that require insurance companies cover contraception: Several of these states like North Carolina, New York, and California have identical religious employer exemptions. Some states like Colorado, Georgia and Wisconsin have no exemption at all.

— Finally, could there be hidden agendas on the part of folks like the Archbishop and Senator Rupp?

In the context of the Archbishop’s righteouos indignation, I’ll point out that according to a recent poll, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, 58% of Catholics support requirements that Catholic affiliated colleges, hospitals and charities offer access to birth control in their insurance plans. It is well-known that many, if not most, Catholics use birth control – 98% according to the Guttmacher Institute. If Church leaders like Archbishop Carlson cannot control their wayward flocks, why should the U.S. government be subborned into doing so via state edict?

As for Senator Rupp, maybe he smells an opportunity to make trouble for the opposition while reaping some pander points. He can ga
rner credit with sex-obsessed zealots by opposing contraception, and he can do it by making ostensibly high-minded claims about “freedom of conscience.” He has to know that the claims are weak; why else would he evoke abortion – a non-issue in the new rules, but a guaranteed alarm bell to the aforesaid zealots?

No matter how you slice it, the  self-congratulatory, high-minded dudgeon of the anti-birth control crowd ignores the welfare of real people while limiting the right of all women, all individuals actually, to make their own health choices in private.  I wouldn’t want to ask my boss if I could use birth control and I don’t think you should have to do so either.  

As of this afternoon at least 26 senators had signed a leter urging the Susan B. Komen Foundation for the Cure to reverse its decision to stop grants to Planned Parenthood. And guess what? Claire McCaskill is one of the latest signatories.  It’s a pretty blunt letter – here’s a sample of its message:

It would be tragic if any woman – let alone thousands of women – lost access to these potentially life-saving screenings because of a politically motivated attack.

We earnestly hope that you will put women’s health before partisan politics and reconsider this decision for the sake of the women who depend on both your organizations for access to the health care they need.

Greg Sargent has the full text here. Maybe McCaskill deserves some thanks? If you want to give her some positive reinforcement, something all pols need from time to time, here’s her email contact form.

I’ve got to admit, unenthusiastic though I often am on the topic of McCaskill, that when it comes to women’s reproductive choice, she’s been pretty consistently good (unless you know something I don’t). In her most recent pitch for contributions, she even touts her support for “a woman’s right to access birth control, including the morning after pill.” For a politician who seems to be generally adverse to controversy, to support making the morning after pill available means crawling out several shaky inches on the pro-choice limb the crazies are trying really hard to break off. Give credit where it’s due, I say.

An excellent St. Louis blogger, Shark Fu at Angry Black Bitch, exposes another of Ed Martin’s retrograde ideas:

Ed Martin is solidly anti-choice…even to the point of opposing access to birth control.

Pause…allow to marinate…continue.

And the choir asked…“Bitch, did you just say birth control?”

And a bitch replied…Yes, birth control.

Martin would restrict access to birth control and emergency contraception.  He thinks pharmacists should be allowed to refuse to fill prescriptions for the pill.

Cool idea for a Carnahan campaign ad: Let ladies in the Third Congressional know that Ed Martin wants to return them to 1890.

Enough is enough.  The anti-women contingent in this state keep pushing us back into the hole we crawled out of in the 1960’s. I remember when I needed summer jobs during college and looked at the “Help Wanted – Female” column in the newspaper.  I remember thinking that a neighbor’s daughter who went to pharmacy school was a disgrace to the neighborhood.  What kind of girl would want a “man’s job”?  There was a time when I wouldn’t dream of going to a female doctor.    That kind of thinking doesn’t change easily.  It’s taken some of us 40 years to really believe that women are intelligent enough to make good decisions.  Now I choose women as my primary care physicians and support women running for political office.

My letter on this subject will be in the Post Dispatch tomorrow.  I’m really fed up with playing defense on women’s reproductive rights.

How in the world did we get to the point where a handful of radicals can

dictate to the citizens of Missouri what kind of birth control they can use?

These are the same people who don’t want the government interfering with their

health care decisions and scream “socialism” when we try to help our uninsured

neighbors. These are the same people who cut funding for mental health

services, early childhood education, and who kick severely disabled people out

of the only “home” they’ve ever known.

It’s not enough that they’ve made it almost impossible for a woman carrying a

fetus that dies in the last trimester to get an abortion. It’s not enough

that they scream “sinner” at young girls impregnated by rapists who hate the

thing the rapists left growing in their belly.

I doubt that most Missourians realize what nonsense passes for legislative

action in Jefferson City. They will find out when they need emergency

contraception and can’t buy it. One of the bills passed by the Missouri House

and now being rammed through the Senate would make it impossible for rural

women to buy the morning after pill because pharmacists can decide for

themselves which drugs they “believe” will cause an abortion. That could

apply to any prescription from a woman’s doctor.

We shouldn’t even have to be discussing this. Couples should be able to make

their reproductive decisions in private. Period.

When citizens cede their decision-making power to extremists, their rights

disappear one by one. We’d better celebrate the 50th anniversary of “the

pill” now because it may not be around much longer. And we’ll have no one to

blame but ourselves.

A follow up on earlier post re petition drive in MO to put to a vote how to define “person” in the

MO Constitution:

Planned Parenthood Federation of America has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Missouri doctors, medical students and a legal expert claiming the summary of the Personhood petition does not accurately describe the true impact of the measure. They expect a hearing sometime this spring, so stay tuned.

For more info, check out

Planned Parenthood’s appeal for help.

Writing at the St. Louis Tea Party site, PlasticEyes, implies that liberals are racists:

But even though we should celebrate [the Stupak amendment] victory, we must remain vigilant, visible, and vocal because the pro-death Democrats will not give up. They are in thrall to Planned Parenthood, which wants to include abortion in socialized healthcare so they can finally achieve Margaret Sanger’s goal of eliminating “undesirables” before they are born. It’s not hard to imagine a government health care counselor withholding prenatal care from a poor black woman but offering her a free abortion.

The implied empathy of tea partiers for poor black women is touching.

To sum up, we’re accused of trying to prevent the birth of black babies by offering abortions instead of birth control. What can I say? When you’re right, you’re right, PlasticEyes. We do want to prevent the birth of “undesirables”–i.e. babies not desired by the mothers. That final phrase, though, offers kind of an important distinction between what you say we want and what we do want.

Republicans, on the other hand, want neither birth control nor abortions. It was the Missouri Republican House that passed HB 1010 in 2006 banning county health clinics from providing family planning services. Fired Up! observed:

So the GOP has finally come clean that they are opposed to contraception. They used to argue that they opposed family planning because Planned Parenthood played a role. But now the GOP has targeted family planning provided by the county health clinics. Their action is a direct attack on women’s access to traditional family planning services.

The amendment, offered by Rep. Susan Phillips (R-Kansas City) removed “voluntary choice of contraception, including natural family planning” as one of the permissible services that county health clinics could provide with state funding.

All that empathy for poor black women that PlasticEyes evinced rings hollow when you consider that many patients at county health clinics are poor women–and in urban districts, they’re poor black women.

During the spring of ’06, Ed Martin was garnering press by opposing another form of birth control, Plan B, and pretending to do so because it was a form of abortion. Oh, horsehockey. It prevents a fertilized egg from being implanted. That’s not the same as an abortion. But denying it to women does bring on unwanted pregnancies, and, guess what … abortions. Kaiser Family Foundation (via Fired Up!) says:

Researchers estimate that widespread use of EC (emergency contraception) could potentially prevent up to half of the approximately 3 million unintended pregnancies that occur annually in the U.S., and one study has suggested that broader use could help prevent as many as 700,000 pregnancies that now result in abortion.

So now I’m confused. Do Republicans actually oppose abortion? Because they fought damned hard to ensure that hundreds of thousands of unnecessary abortions would occur each year.

Or do they just oppose poor women (aka sluts) enjoying sex without paying a penalty? Okay, not fair. Maybe Rep. Susan Phillips thinks they’re sluts, but PlasticEyes would favor handing them condoms. Whatever. All I know is that tea partiers are not long on logic.