Just when you think the Catholic theocrats can’t get any more disgusting, they surprise you. Catholic News Agency reports the theocratic point of view on Catholic hospitals and health care institutions refusing to provide contraception.
Following controversy over a Catholic-affiliated medical center’s rejection of contraceptive practices in Oklahoma, physicians have said that such institutions are trying to act with integrity.
“Catholic hospitals and health care providers do not prevent women from accessing what they want, they just don’t provide it themselves,” Lester Ruppersberger, a Pennsylvania physician and vice president of the Catholic Medical Association, said April 3.
“They are not lobbying against contraception, they just do not wish to be forced to violate their beliefs and ethics.”
Bollocks. When they’re the only game in town, they do indeed prevent women from getting access to what they want. You can’t just go to WalMart and buy an IUD and shove it in, you know.
He told CNA that those who do not agree with Catholic medical ethics “are not being deprived” and “do not have the right to expect or force (Catholic health systems) to provide what they cannot and will not.”
Yes they do. If you don’t want to do the job, don’t take the job. The job is the job.
Rebecca Peck, a Florida-based family physician, criticized assumptions that birth control drugs are difficult to secure.
“They are widely available, even if there is not another health care system in town.” The federal Title X Family Planning Program makes contraceptives “widely available, even free,” and the drugs can be purchased at the retail giant Wal-Mart “for about $10 a month,” she said.
Peck, a member of the Catholic Medical Association, said that contraceptives and morning-after pills do not prevent disease.
“Fertility and children are not diseases,” she told CNA April 3.
She said that contraceptive use is bad for women’s health and their relationships, noting some studies indicating an increase in breast cancer and cervical cancer risk, the risk of strokes and blood clots, and occasionally death.
Ruppersberger said that Catholics understand that contraception “violates the meaning of the marital act” by separating procreation from the unitive dimensions of marital relations.
Peck labeled as “short-sighted,” concerns that the Catholic-affiliated medical center policy will hurt the local economy by driving business elsewhere.
She said money from obstetric and pediatric services for children helps contribute to the town’s economy, as does the labor of the children after they grow up.
Therefore, it’s perfectly fine for the Catholic church to force women to have those children when they don’t want to. The Catholic church gets to decide and not the people who will have and raise the children – according to Rebecca Peck.
She said Catholic health systems “promote family life, which is the heart and soul of every town,” and that Catholic health care provides a necessary counterweight to “an increasingly secular and utilitarian society.”
Ruppersberger said Catholic hospitals exist to provide “Christ-centered health care,” which aims to apply Catholic teachings “with integrity and compassion.”
“Christ” is for church. Keep your “Christ” out of our hospitals.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)