We can only hope religious leaders will read the facts and understand what the people in their own ministries really believe. Thank you for providing this information.

The compromise proposed by the President was a good one and supported by almost 70% of the American people. The same type of program could be used for other religious organizations that do not believe in certain types of medical treatments that may be needed by their employees or members of their employees families.

70 % ... measured how?

Tom...a number of polls have been taken. Links to two of them are below. Note that I said "close" to 70%.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57377864-503544/poll-most-back-mandating-contraception-coverage/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/us/politics/poll-finds-support-for-contraception-policy-and-gay-couples.html?_r=1

Personally I do not believe the issue at hand is whether people of Faith utilize contraceptives. You would have to live in a hole to believe that devout people of Faith only practice Natural Family Planning. The issue here is not whether or not Religous individuals use contraception, in the most recent debate Catholics specifically, but instead whether or not the Federal Government has the Constitutional authority to mandate anything in regard to its inclusion in any Healthcare Plan or compell any entity to make available a Healthcare Plan that covers them. Finally, does it have the authority to mandate ANY private company (the Healthcare Insurance Companies in this case) to pay for them in any amount if the end user of their services object to the inclusion of contraceptive coverage in the products made available to them, i.e. policies made available to Catholic Organizations.

Here is a truth, the Federal Government does not have the authority to do what it is doing, period. Another truth, nobody has a RIGHT to contraceptives, you have the right to go buy them, but you DO NOT have the right to have someone else buy them for you unless you enter into a contract with another entity to do so, i.e. a Healthcare Plan that covers them. Here is another truth, if you don't like the fact that your employer doesn't provide access to Healthcare options that cover contraceptives you can go get another job or rework your budget and go buy them yourself.

All harsh, all true

Thank you Robert for your comments. I wrote this article in January and happened to submit it when I got a reminder from Patch that I hadn't submitted my first blog. It just happened to be the same day as the hearing.

Robert, you are correct; the issue is not contraceptives, it's women's rights. Women have the right to health care for their entire bodies. Women have the right to determine whether or not we want to get pregnant. Since the church doesn’t require men to show their marriage license in order to buy Viagra, the church has no business being concerned with women’s reasons for taking estrogen.

John...this becomes an issue though when the religious (or any other organization) is acting in the capacity as an employer. There are other religions organizations that object to certain types of medical procedures/treatment also. Are they allowed to pick and choose what they will over for their employees? Without being repititious I think the compromise put forth by the President is fair to all.

@ John, my prior career was an employee benefits specialist for an insurance broker in another state. One of my clients were the Catholic Charites hospitals and as they were traditionally insured employers they had to offer these benefits just like every other traditionally insured employer. Many of the doctors and employees were only employees and not affiliated with the church.

Peggy, I am going to have to respectfully disagree with your assertion that this is a Women's Rights issue, the issue sits at a much higher level than that. It has to do with the Federal Government overstepping its Constitutional authority to mandate contraception be covered in EVERY Healthcare policy. This addresses your point as well Bob. It is not that the Catholic Church is wanting to pick and choose what they want to offer their employees within the context of a particular policy, rather the problem is created when the Feds mandate ALL policies that are offered have components in them that the organization disagrees with and no other alternative exists except to not offer ANY Healthcare to their employees because nothing else is available to choose from that fits their needs. By all means a Religious Organization can pick and choose what it wants to offer its employees but they can only do so when there are actually more options than ONLY Healthcare Products that have components that are not inline with their principles.

While you may feel what the President has done is "fair" to all, the real problem is you're accepting the false premise that he and this Administration has the authority to do any of it at all, which they do not. What he has done is smoke and mirrors, the problem isn't that the Catholic Church doesn't want to pay for policies with contraception, they don't even want to offer them and the Federal Government is overstepping its boundaries.

This is a women’s rights issue! The church should not be able to discriminate against women by denying them full health care when they provide full health care to men. What other organization is allowed to discriminate against women? Enough already! The church needs to follow civil laws. They already protect their pedophile priests from civil punishment. We cannot let churches disregard the freedoms and laws that every other organization must follow.

First and foremost, I will agree with you in that the Catholic Church hierarchy had squandered the opportunity to do the right thing when reprehensible behavior was discovered in its ranks as far back as the early 80's and continued until the lid was blown off the cover-ups and settlements in 2002.

I need you to define the discrimination you are referring to here, if it is that Viagra is covered for men but Estrogen is not for women therefore women are being discriminated against then you and I are seeing it from different perspectives. I see it as Viagra being acceptable not because it "is for men" but instead because it does not prevent procreation and can be argued by some that it actually encourages it. Estrogen on the other hand, and by Estrogen I am referring to it specifically in the context of "the pill", is explicitly taken, the VAST majority of the time, for the sole purpose of preventing pregnancy, i.e. procreation. I wonder what coverage is offered, if any, for male forms of contraceptives in policies Catholic Organizations make available to their employees. Are these same policies that deny Estrogen and other female forms of contraception also entitling men to the "right" to condoms and vasectomies? If that is the case I would tend to agree more with your "discrimination" argument and suggest they too be unavailable. If those things aren't covered either, your argument has very little to substantiate it beyond populist rhetoric.

Thanks in advance...

Estrogen is used to treat many medical problems. The church does not differentiate, which it can't because that would violate patient's privacy laws. Knowing that this drug is used to treat medical conditions and denying that treatment is discrimination.

The church pays for all men's reproductive health care needs so they must pay for all female reproductive health care needs. Otherwise, it's discrimination!

by the way ..
If reproductive sterilization is against the teachings of the Catholic Church, why are Catholic hospitals performing these procedures?
That’s the question being raised by a researcher at Baylor University whose analysis of patient discharge records suggests that thousands of women have elected to have tubal ligation surgery at Catholic hospitals across the U.S.
More than 1,000 women had such procedures in 2008 and 2009 at Catholic hospitals in New Jersey, including St. Clare’s Hospital in Denville, which is in the Paterson Diocese, and Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County in Willingboro, which is within the Diocese of Trenton, according to the study
Written by Shannon Mullen

@ John, I was referring to at the time of being their broker of traditional federally standardized insurance plans where the only options an employer has is how much the deductible will be and very few other options. It had to do with the size of the group and nothing more.

@ Everyone else: I started doing this research due to personal identity crises I was going through and my curiosity to find out what other women are actually doing. Birth control, religion and politics are not subjects, in my experience, women discuss with each other. Despite the 62 million women in their child bearing years and the approximately 38 million women using birth control, finding women’s voices on this subject or finding their representation proved difficult. My training as an insurance broker kicked in. I know despite what people say (I don’t smoke, don’t drink alcohol, I exercise) is not always what they are doing. To adequately insure a large group you look at their “experience” and what the behavior of that group is.
Maybe women don’t speak out about birth control because it’s a very private matter, or they may feel judged by their religious leaders or society, perhaps it’s because women still lack parity of representation in our government and in many of our religions or like me, maybe many may feel they have become embodiment of oxymoronism “Pro-choice-Republican, devout –fill in the religion- birth control ingestor. I was looking to see if I was the only woman who felt this way and trying to find a place where I belonged without feeling like a liar. I found out that I was not alone, but mostly through the research.

Peggy I would like to personally thank you for sharing your opinion and because of it and the responses realize maybe why there haven't been other women commenting.

@ Robert thank you. I did not mention health care coverage in my article, however I did attach the hearing videos from you tube because women were not represented. My intention was to show other women and men that we are using birth control even if we belong to religions that are against it. As an American woman (I do not feel comfortable speaking for all, just myself) I literally woke up a few months ago questioning my political affiliation, my beliefs and wanted to see if I was the only woman who felt this way.

For the record, I am currently without a formal religion, and unsure of my political affiliation. I do suffer from Polycyctic Ovarian syndrome which is one of the conditions treated by hormonal birth control. I am no longer in my child bearing years (47 years old) and do feel birth control has health benefits in and of themselves, by allowing women to space their children, to time when they have children. Which maybe subject we can discuss in another blog after I do my research :).

Oh Robert I realized you were refering to my comment regarding group insurance. It's what made me do the research to begin with to find out what women were doing.