Horsehead Tea And Birth Control
The Magic Tea Cup brings us another image that could be interpreted more than one way. I see a horse's head (darker image) or a stingray (the lighter one).
The raging debate over the birth control/health insurance issue strikes me as yet another ridiculous way we have dreamed up to divide ourselves into classes of right and wrong. Should employers be required to provide insurance benefits for medications or procedures they find morally objectionable? Yes. Yes, they should. The reason why has nothing to do with what is or isn't moral. It doesn't really matter whether or not your employer opposes or supports birth control. What matters is that your employer cannot impose her/his moral code or religion upon you.
If you give your employers the power to decide which health benefits they will or won't cover based upon their religions or their moral codes you are also giving them the power to manipulate your health care choices to suit criteria which do not necessarily include your health care needs. You give them the power to decide that you should just pray for deliverance rather than take an allergy medication or that you should just live with a disfigurement rather than have reconstructive surgery. It is much too slippery a slope when you consider how many religions there are in this country and many of them disagree about what is or isn't morally objectionable.
Do you really want to give someone else jurisdiction over your prenatal care or your child's immunizations based upon their religion? Suppose their religion opposes treating diabetes? What if their moral code found pace makers or organ transplants objectionable? Imagine you are the victim of a terrible car accident. I know of at least one branch of Christianity that prohibits its followers from receiving donor blood; meaning that they can bleed to death and be morally right or stay alive after a blood transfusion and be morally wrong. Start chipping away at the separation between how much another person's religion is allowed to dictate your choices--especially regarding your own health--and you slowly surrender whatever it is YOU believe just to remain employed. Isn't that just a passive form of slavery?
It only takes the voluntary relinquishment of one covered health benefit--such as birth control--to open the door for an employer to say no to coverage of anything. It needn't even be something as controversial as birth control; it could be eyeglasses or root canals. The larger point is that you don't want your boss making these decisions based on a faith or morality you may not share. Our employers are prohibited from discriminating against us based upon our religions to the extent that they cannot even ask our religions before deciding to employ us. Changing the existing laws would allow these same employers to withhold covered health benefits from us based upon not sharing their religions, which is discrimination. It baffles me that this is even up for debate.
There are 118 million women registered to vote in this country who risk losing covered health benefits simply by virtue of not sharing the same faith as their lawmakers. How could a voting force that is 118 million strong submit to something so unconstitutional and still stand idly by while we are gouged for the full cost of tampons and sanitary napkins? I'll tell you how; because it's not about birth control, it's about our juvenile need to classify the sinners from the saints, the good from the bad, and the saved from the damned so that we can take satisfaction that we are on the right team. We are so busy pointing and judging and quoting scripture at each other over our hymnals that we can't even see that we are being used as pawns to serve someone else's agenda. Who would reap the benefits of denying coverage for birth control? Who would get to recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? Think about it. Women who were smart enough to demand their reproductive rights over the last century are smart enough to figure out who stands to profit from eroding them.
(c) 2012, ACG
The raging debate over the birth control/health insurance issue strikes me as yet another ridiculous way we have dreamed up to divide ourselves into classes of right and wrong. Should employers be required to provide insurance benefits for medications or procedures they find morally objectionable? Yes. Yes, they should. The reason why has nothing to do with what is or isn't moral. It doesn't really matter whether or not your employer opposes or supports birth control. What matters is that your employer cannot impose her/his moral code or religion upon you.
If you give your employers the power to decide which health benefits they will or won't cover based upon their religions or their moral codes you are also giving them the power to manipulate your health care choices to suit criteria which do not necessarily include your health care needs. You give them the power to decide that you should just pray for deliverance rather than take an allergy medication or that you should just live with a disfigurement rather than have reconstructive surgery. It is much too slippery a slope when you consider how many religions there are in this country and many of them disagree about what is or isn't morally objectionable.
Do you really want to give someone else jurisdiction over your prenatal care or your child's immunizations based upon their religion? Suppose their religion opposes treating diabetes? What if their moral code found pace makers or organ transplants objectionable? Imagine you are the victim of a terrible car accident. I know of at least one branch of Christianity that prohibits its followers from receiving donor blood; meaning that they can bleed to death and be morally right or stay alive after a blood transfusion and be morally wrong. Start chipping away at the separation between how much another person's religion is allowed to dictate your choices--especially regarding your own health--and you slowly surrender whatever it is YOU believe just to remain employed. Isn't that just a passive form of slavery?
It only takes the voluntary relinquishment of one covered health benefit--such as birth control--to open the door for an employer to say no to coverage of anything. It needn't even be something as controversial as birth control; it could be eyeglasses or root canals. The larger point is that you don't want your boss making these decisions based on a faith or morality you may not share. Our employers are prohibited from discriminating against us based upon our religions to the extent that they cannot even ask our religions before deciding to employ us. Changing the existing laws would allow these same employers to withhold covered health benefits from us based upon not sharing their religions, which is discrimination. It baffles me that this is even up for debate.
There are 118 million women registered to vote in this country who risk losing covered health benefits simply by virtue of not sharing the same faith as their lawmakers. How could a voting force that is 118 million strong submit to something so unconstitutional and still stand idly by while we are gouged for the full cost of tampons and sanitary napkins? I'll tell you how; because it's not about birth control, it's about our juvenile need to classify the sinners from the saints, the good from the bad, and the saved from the damned so that we can take satisfaction that we are on the right team. We are so busy pointing and judging and quoting scripture at each other over our hymnals that we can't even see that we are being used as pawns to serve someone else's agenda. Who would reap the benefits of denying coverage for birth control? Who would get to recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? Think about it. Women who were smart enough to demand their reproductive rights over the last century are smart enough to figure out who stands to profit from eroding them.
(c) 2012, ACG
ooohhhh!
sassy rants (and rolls)
yes and yes.
Reply to this
clap-clap-clap-clap!!!
Reply to this
!!!!!
Reply to this