FU - FairAndUNbalanced.com

Wow. I'm honored that you dedicated a whole post to me.

I think JMyste is right: my outrage that your morality makes it an imperative that women die or suffer when medicine and insurance plans are available is my own problem. Your morality is illegal. That must be difficult for you to come to grips with. But I will take comfort in the fact that I live in a country where your morality is illegal rather than try to help you learn that you are hurting others, because I don't think I'm capable.

If I cannot teach you, perhaps you can learn from Warren Jeffs, who also does not think he is hurting anyone. For a less extreme example the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH), who thought taking multiple wives was acceptable if the husband could treat them all fairly. Their morality is also illegal.

No, I will not explain to your my own personal medical history that makes the birth control pill a medicine (in part because I cannot teach you). But I suggest you educate yourself about Polycystic ovary syndrome, and pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder and other things that the birth control pill treat.

"The Catholic Church is not insisting that other people cannot use contraception or have abortions."

Did you not read the article about what happened in Ireland? By the way, that wasn't an isolated incident. Something similar happened in America at a Catholic hospital. But here, the nun overseeing the hospital was more compassionate and allowed the woman to live. The nun was subsequently excommunicated. That she was subsequently unexcommunicated doesn't mean that the Church changed their mind regarding depraved heart murder.

One final thought: earlier you posited that "Worst case, they will either no longer offer ANY health insurance or they will cease operations of these businesses." Actually, I think that is the best case scenario. I don't want anyone to make the mistake of wandering into a hospital because they are sick and need medical intervention but to have a hospital employee say "I'm sorry. My hands are tied. I'm shomer negiah. I can't touch you." Or similar. And if companies are allowed to dictate how their employees spend their money (because the employees typically do pay for their own insurance, so yes, actually, the Church is trying to tell other people how to live their lives or being disingenuous) then the sooner they get out of the health insurance business, the better. Maybe then people will realize that this insurance model is not good.

“…my outrage that your morality makes it an imperative that women die or suffer when medicine and insurance plans are available is my own problem. Your morality is illegal.”

Emily, respectfully you are not only misguided but absolutely wrong, ma’am. The whole purpose of my morality as informed by my Catholic faith is to help and love my neighbor. Granted that I and every other Catholic/Christian will always fall short of this goal. That said, Catholic hospitals etc. are there to protect life. Are there times when medical staff made erroneous decisions as to whether a pregnancy was endangering the mother and she consequently died? Yep, and I am sure there will unfortunately be more such horrible cases. The fact is that there will be an infinitesimally smaller number of those cases than where the innocent life of an unborn child is killed when the mother’s life is not in peril at secular hospitals.

Next, your straw man argument of comparing Catholicism to a Warren Jeffs’ fundamentalist Mormonism or to the more radical strains of Islam is quite ridiculous. First, in those other faiths, members were often persecuted or worse if they chose not to follow the dictates of those faiths. They certainly weren’t able to leave those faiths on their own accord without great repercussions. If a Catholic chooses not to live by what the church teaches, at the very worst for him he will be unable to partake of certain sacraments. It ultimately is an issue of conscience between the Catholic and God. I could dedicate a lot more space to the differences, but I suspect you already are aware that this was a silly argument from the start, ma’am.

Continuing, I had previously explained to you that the Church doesn’t permit the taking of an unborn life through an abortive practice with such being the intent. If the intent is to save the life of the mother and ultimately has the very sad consequences of resulting in the death of the child, then that is permissible. The practice of double effect comes into play. The intent is to save the mom; not kill the child.

This same double effect standard is also permissible by the Church when it comes to using certain contraceptions such as in the cases you described. If the purpose of the contraception is to treat a serious malady (and I am not talking about acne) and no other method is available to treat the condition, then medications that will have a contraceptive efficacy can be used. The difference is that the intent is to treat a medical condition and not to constrain the unitive and procreative functions of the marital embrace. There are many Catholics in good standing that are in full communion with Christ’s own church that take such medicines to treat conditions such as you described. Of course with petitions on the White House web site to label the Catholic Church as a hate group, I can understand how misinformed people can think ill of the Church today.

Lastly, Emily, do you know how many millions and millions of Americans are cared for by Catholic hospitals today in this country? If your irrational hatred of the Church was allowed to run its course in concert with the egregious and unconstitutional Obamacare HHS mandate, there would immediately be a HUGE shortage of medical care providers in this nation. Considering that a doctor shortage is already starting, I think further reducing the number of providers will only exacerbate medical costs, let alone access and availability.

By the way, those that do not agree with Catholic morality when it comes to such matters may want to choose to work elsewhere, as is there right. It would be akin to someone that was pro-gay marriage not wanting to work for an organization like Chic-fil-A. I would not choose to work for Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream because of their work with leftist organizations. That is their right to do so; I simply don’t have to work for them. Such is the case for people working for Catholic organizations. It would seem quite unfair, let alone un-American, to force an organization to change its ways because some of its employees didn’t agree with the overarching philosophy of the organization’s morality. That is why Sandra Fluke was disingenuous in the extreme. She attended a Catholic university and then insisted that they pay for her contraception. Bad form, I’d say.

I do appreciate your comments though, Emily. Thank you.

"That said, Catholic hospitals etc. are there to protect life. "

You cannot say they are they to protect life if they kill people through inaction. Denying a woman a safe life saving procedure is not an erroneous decision. It is depraved indifference murder. I'm glad you disagree with this practice, but it doesn't appear as though your opinion is totally shared by the Church.

If something that you said you are morally obligated to do the law prevents you from doing, then your morality is illegal (but that doesn't imply criminal, just to clarify). If you are telling me that your faith mandates that employers tell their employees how to spend THEIR money (By the way, Fluke, and most students and employees, pay for their own health insurance. The employer creates a group plan, but it's the employee or student that actually pays the cost. And if the employer subsidizes the insurance plan, there's a way simpler than legal gymnastics to avoid paying for a practice they don't like: stop paying the subsidy. What's disingenuous now?), then practicing that aspect of your faith is illegal.

I should have been more clear: I am comparing Catholics to the Jeffs's cult and modern Islam and early LDS only in the sense that they are all faith that have a practice outlawed (there are probably several other examples, I just didn't think of them). I hope we can agree Jeffs has done horrible things (I've yet to read the article from psychological journals that you mentioned about pedophilia) (and I'm not even going to get into pedophilia in the Church). But are you really saying that Catholics never made people convert on pain of death? Really? (I'd much rather pay a Dhimmi tax than go through auto da fe.)

Did you read up on the diseases I mentioned? Because if you did, I don't think you'd have even mentioned acne. I mean suicidal ideation or attempts two weeks out of the month, development of infertility, severe pain, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure. How can you call the Church compassionate if you think they should not let their employees use their own money to pay for the medication to treat these things?

Unconstitutional doesn't mean "I disagree."

I actually don't hate the Church. I want it to be better.

Finally, I don't want to tread on Mr. Deming's blog any longer. We're not going to convince each other that the other is wrong. Let's find something we can agree on: thoughts on John Paul II? I love what he did for interfaith relations. And I always tear up when I read about him and Edith Zierer. Here's an article. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/international/worldspecial2/06krakow.html?_r=0 Have tissues handy.