Thursday, March 21, 2013

Religion and Birth Control-- the Endless Debate

This screenshot to the right is a good example of the ongoing debate regarding access to birth control and religion. The commenter thinks that forcing companies to provide insurance coverage for birth control is "trampling on religious beliefs," but on the other hand, isn't it wrong to enforce your religious beliefs upon your employees, especially if they are not in alignment with your own? I interpret this as an affront to one of our essential freedoms. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In the event that you flunked history class, that was the first line of the very first amendment of the United States Constitution.

If you personally don't agree with birth control, nobody is forcing you to take it. You have the right to dislike it based on your faith or whatever reason you may have. However, nobody has the right to tell anyone else whether or not they can use it. This is a personal choice that is between the subject, his/her partner, and his/her physician, nobody else, and certainly not the government or their employer. Besides, according to
a study by the Guttmacher Institute, 98% of Catholic women use or have used some form of birth control. So I would ask the commenter in the screenshot; who are you to trample on people’s right to access safe, preventative contraception?

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