More on the students’ opposition to Notre Dame’s lawsuit:
If the University can provide access to medications that treat erectile dysfunction without question, because it trusts that men will use it wisely, why not treat women likewise when it comes to contraceptives? The University’s policies do not treat men and women as equally capable and trustworthy moral agents, and the University is going to court to defend that disparity.
While it is not clear to us that compliance with the mandate would violate Catholic conscience, it is clear that gender inequity is wrong both legally and morally. ‘Dignitatis Humanae,’ the Vatican’s 1965 declaration of religious freedom, says: “[G]overnment is to see to it that equality of citizens before the law, which is itself an element of the common good, is never violated, whether openly or covertly, for religious reasons. Nor is there to be discrimination among citizens.”
Truly living out the University’s mission and Catholic identity requires creating more equitable University policies and a more family-friendly environment.
We seek a frank, open discussion about why complying with the mandate is contrary to its conscience, and why filing a lawsuit against the federal government is a suitable means of furthering the university’s moral mission.
Given their premises, there is a difference, though, at least with oral contraceptives. People who use Viagra wrongly are not endangering a life. At least oral contraceptives can, given the Catholic view of the moral status of the fetus and a controversial but not-settled scientific issue over whether oral contraceptives can have an abortifacient effect (my understanding is that there’s no agreement on that matter yet, with some on both sides of the abortion debate saying it can and some on both sides of the abortion debate saying it can’t). But condoms, of course, wouldn’t have that feature.
Jeremy, http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/what-abortifacient-and-what-it-isnt
The difference is that erectile dysfunction is an instance of a physiological malfunctioning of the human body. Contraceptives subvert natural, healthy physical functions for personal motives. If I have a broken arm, it is not the doctor’s place to ask whether, once healed, I will use my arm to beat my wife. If I would like to beat my wife and I am healthy, however, the doctor has no obligation to provide me with some tool to use in order to do so.
That being said, if the University were to pursue, in tandem with this lawsuit, some regulation of the dispensation of medication for erectile dysfunction, I would not in principle be opposed. Somehow, though, I don’t think that’s your end goal.
If there’s no morally licit purpose for which an erection could serve, can erectile dysfunction properly be called an instance of physiological malfunction? The scientific and medical communities have deemed that contraceptives are medicinal in nature– the Church rejects this for moral reasons. I can’t see why the same shouldn’t be true, on their view, of medications that treat erectile dysfunction in circumstances where the individual is unmarried. There’s nothing wrong with subverting natural processes according to Catholic teaching– and the concept of “healthy” is complicated. There are, in fact, many benefits to properly spacing and planning births (and without doing so, maternal and infant mortality rates increase). The church doesn’t reject family planning as such, but contraceptives particularly because of the *moral* implications.
Preventing implantation, then. The distinction is not morally significant if an embryo has moral status. On the Catholic view, anything that can prevent implantation, even if it’s not typical to describe that as an abortion or abortifacient, is morally problematic even apart from the issue of aiding nature vs. resisting it, as pointed out by James. So it’s possible to question the Catholic assumptions here, but it’s hard to argue that it’s simply gender discrimination, given those Catholic assumptions.
Jeremy, I don’t even think that’s quite clear– after all, we might wonder to what extent making use of NFP prevents implantation (though, I really don’t know and this is a complicated issue in its own right), and emergency contraceptive use is morally permissible for victims of rape under the ERDCHC directive 36. But further, if I’m reading the data correctly, the extent to which the contraceptives in question prevent implantation is not clear, and if they do, it is a secondary effect. Are you reading this differently?
A few significant points:
-As far as I know (I may be wrong, but I doubt it) 1) health insurance providers do not typically dispense viagra/cialis/etc. free of charge, 2) no one on any side has suggested a mandate that they do so.
-If the University of Notre Dame were required by law to dispense medication for erectile dysfunction free of charge, I would both be in opposition and would support the University’s taking some action to ensure that they were not being forced to subsidize activity they found contrary to principle. (ie, giving it freely only to married men. this is hypothetical, I have no idea what the legal prospects would be for doing this. then again, no one seems to be throwing a fit about making viagra free, although I often receive helpful emails about places to buy it cheaply)
-There are many things, and many of them much less dubiously medicinal than contraceptives, that are nevertheless not provided for free under most insurance plans. For example, I think it is more important that someone be able to see well enough to function in day-to-day life than it is that they have contraceptives. Yet there is no national movement to provide me with free contacts, and, in fact, I pay for both my eye exams and my lenses out of my own pocket.
-You are correct that the church does not oppose family planning as such. But NFP differs drastically from contraceptives insofar as there is nothing being subverted. In the natural course of events, no sex = no babies, and sex = babies (assuming fertility, regularity, etc. etc.) In that case, abstaining during fertile periods of the woman’s cycle is not unnatural (no sex = no babies) and having a child is natural. What is unnatural is attempting to bring about sex = no babies. This is what contraception does, what the church considers illicit, and what the University is being asked to subsidize.
I have to get to work, so I’ll have to leave this to the rest of you to discuss at least for now– but one quick point before I go, so far as I know, no one has studied whether or not NFP (when being used to prevent conception) wholly prevents conception when used properly. If that’s right, there’s a question about whether or not scheduling your sex life in particular ways actually prevents conception or if it only sometimes prevents conception and sometimes prevents implantation. Also, I’m not quite sure what you mean when you say it’s unnatural to bring it about such that sex=no babies. NFP is purported to be equally as effective as artificial contraceptives at preventing pregnancy, and it doesn’t involve total abstinence.
By what mechanism might NFP prevent implantation? You can’t conceive an embryo when you’re not having sex, and you can’t conceive an embryo if an egg isn’t released. NFP restrics sex to when there’s no egg either being released or about to be released. I’m not seeing how there’s any mechanism there for a conceived egg that’s not implanted. Are you questioning its effectiveness at detecting when the egg is released?
There are some Catholic hospitals that allow emergency contraception in cases of rape, if it can be determined that pregnancy hasn’t already occurred. I believe that’s from the side that thinks it’s extremely unlikely that they can prevent implantation, which is the issue that as far as I can tell there’s no consensus on. The other side of the dispute, among Catholics, would consider this a horrific thing to do.
They do consider it a secondary effect, but it is a known effect, and the law of double effect only applies when the consequence for allowing the known effect is much better than otherwise. So I guess the issue there would be whether the consequence of allowing a conceived embryo to develop is so bad that it significantly outweighs the bad of allowing its death. I don’t think most pro-lifers would think it does.
Catholic doctrine is an affront to gender equity through its consistent failure to acknowledge that gender equity is even a problem and its many policies that privilege males. This is merely one instance.
NY Times, June 5, 2012:
“Studies have not established that emergency contraceptive pills prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the womb, leading scientists say. Rather, the pills delay ovulation, the release of eggs from ovaries that occurs before eggs are fertilized, and some pills also thicken cervical mucus so sperm have trouble swimming.
It turns out that the politically charged debate over morning-after pills and abortion, a divisive issue in this election year, is probably rooted in outdated or incorrect scientific guesses about how the pills work. Because they block creation of fertilized eggs, they would not meet abortion opponents’ definition of abortion-inducing drugs. “
Just curious–does anyone know whether ND’s policy allows for prescribing birth control pills for any of their many other health uses besides contraception? I looked around a little and couldn’t find an answer to this question. Perhaps ND opposes using the pill to regulate, say, endometriosis. If that were the case, the university would be discriminating against women by failing to support the medically preferred treatments for serious health problems faced uniquely by women.
Birth control is poison. Just throwing that in there for anyone who’s never questioned it. Sad but true.
Reblogged this on Adventures and Musings of a Hedgewitch.
birth control is medicine, not poison. birth control pills were prescribed to treat the cystic ovary syndrome i had as a teenager, an extremely painful medical condition. the woman rush limbaugh called a “slut,” sandra fluke, was in fact giving testimony describing a friend – a lesbian, incidentally – who had the same condition i had and could not get a prescription from Georgetown, because Georgetown decided it would be used for contraceptive purposes (regardless of what the woman said she needed it for, or presumably, what the doctor signed the scrip for). it would come as no surprise to me if Notre Dame had the same blanket policy.
actually, judging from the wording of the full letter excerpted above, it does sound like the university provides access to erectile dysfunction medication without justification for use, but it requires justification for use of bc from unmarried women and/or students, so yeah.
Hey Jeremy, I see Anne already replied to part of your comment–but as to the rest, first, emergency contraceptives are permissible for victims of rape under the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care directive 36, and second, I was thinking actually just given that sperm can remain viable for up to five days and given the planning methods of NFP I’m familiar with, it doesn’t seem implausible that it wouldn’t wholly prevent conception. Do you know if there’s data on this?
Oh, and the mechanism for a fertilized egg– there I was just thinking of the changes to cervical mucus that enable or inhibit implantation throughout a fertility cycle.