The whole bruhaha about birth control was just a political stunt. Twenty eight states already require the Catholic Church to cover birth control in their insurance policies, and 97% of Catholic women have used birth control at sometime in their life.
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9 Comments
Adam, have you no shame? Trying to infuse FACTS into a political pile-up.
“Twenty eight states already require the Catholic Church to cover birth control in their insurance policies” – Source please. I could find none and in fact, none exist.
IK was sort of incorrect, though based on your tone I doubt you were calling him out on the actual facts. It is true that 28 states already require it, but most of them allow exemptions. 8 of them allow no exemptions for any reason.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/nyregion/catholic-institutions-reluctantly-comply-with-ny-contraceptives-law.html
“New York, whose population is an estimated 40 percent Catholic, is one of 28 states that have required insurers to cover contraception. Twenty of those states permit some exemptions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which researches sexual and reproductive health issues.
“It goes from eight states that don’t permit any refusal at all to another eight states that allow a variety of organizations to refuse, including hospitals,” said Elizabeth Nash, the state issues manager for the institute.”
I didn’t put in the link because the post just before this had all the facts and the links. In fact, the statement “Twenty eight states already require the Catholic Church to cover birth control in their insurance policies” is true, not just because 8 states have no exemption at all, but the other 20 require businesses that are owned by the Catholic church (but are not themselves churches or directly religious) to cover birth control.
I had to laugh at Windsavage saying he couldn’t find any sources, when there were plenty of them just a few screen inches away. He’s likely a troll.
[full disclosure — I’m at a conference this weekend, and posting from my laptop in sessions, so I was lazy not including the link again. I’m normally more careful.]
TENTHIRTYTWO – With all due respect, the NY Times article you posted says nothing about 28 states and out of 245 Catholic sponsored colleges and universities in the US, they mention maybe 8. Hardly proof. The last I heard, New York State does not represent the entire nation.
I asked in plain English as to a “bona fide” source or study as to point out which these 28 states legally require Catholic institutions to provide birth control. You have not done that.
Iron Knee – You reply indicating I am a troll, just becuase I ask for clarification, reeks of the same intolerance and hypocrisy (as point out in a recent Glenn Greenwald article – http://www.salon.com/2012/02/08/repulsive_progressive_hypocrisy/singleton/)
As an educated liberal, and a long time reader here, I will not accept any so-called facts from anyone unless they can be authenticated. Other than your trite troll remark, you also did not provide a source.
I daresay, perhaps Greenwald is right. The same sickness of the right is now infecting the left.
Your tone, even if it is unintentional, makes you sound like a troll. For example, you just said that I indicated that you are a troll “just because I ask for clarification”. No, I said that you are likely a troll not because you asked for clarification, but because you claimed that no such clarification exists. Especially since in the previous posting right in front of your nose, I had such clarification.
Now you claim that I still didn’t provide a source, when I pointed you right at it. In addition, 1032 provided an additional source. You then pivoted and argued that NY State does not represent the entire nation. So which is it? There is no source, or do you just disagree with the provided sources? Are you arguing that NY State represents eight states?
Oh, and thanks for the link to the Greenwald article. I agree with him. I believe (and have said) that Obama should close Guantanamo, and should treat terrorism as a (serious) crime, not as a war. But I’ve also seen Obama try to move in that direction and noted the (repulsive negative) response from the American people (as Greenwald reports), from Congress, and from the media. But to be honest, Greenwald’s article doesn’t have much to do with sources and facts, it is about opinions and “blind leader loyalty” — it’s a red herring in this discussion.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you would have noticed that readers are all too happy to question me pointedly when I get sloppy with facts. And I welcome that.
I appreciate you following up, and I would love for you to add (in a constructive way) to this discussion. But if you just want to act like a troll then I will be obliged to stop feeding you.
“With all due respect, the NY Times article you posted says nothing about 28 states”
I find it extremely baffling that you would say this, considering the quote I copied directly from the article mentions 28 states. Did you bother to read it, or the article itself? I will copy and paste it once again:
“New York, whose population is an estimated 40 percent Catholic, is one of 28 states that have required insurers to cover contraception.”
28 states is verbatim in that quote.
You are absolutely welcome to say that the source is invalid. However at that point I lose interest, because you have no basis (or at least no stated basis) to assume that the person quoted from the Guttmacher Institute is an invalid source, or that the NYT somehow misquoted her. I’ve played the “that’s not a valid source” game before, and it grows tiresome quickly.
Additionally, you say:
“I asked in plain English as to a “bona fide” source or study as to point out which these 28 states legally require Catholic institutions to provide birth control.”
You did not. You quoted the ’28 states’ statement and asked for a source (as well as stating definitively that none exist). In spite of your hubris, I was kind enough to find one and give it to you. If you find this unacceptable and/or require further edification, I suggest you email the Institute directly. I’m quite certain they have the information you desire. But it might not be up to the standards of an educated liberal such as yourself.
Windsavage: A Google search for the phrase “Twenty eight states already require the Catholic Church to cover birth control in their insurance policies” will return to you more than 100 results from a wide variety of sources that reported this fact. Most also mention 8 states do not allow any exemptions for the Church at all.
It is a little more difficult to find the list of the 28 actual states, but here is a link: http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_ICC.pdf New York, California, New Jersey, and Maine are mentioned in multiple article references.
I hope this providing of the factual data addresses your concerns.