Today is Valentine's Day, which brings with it thoughts of romance, frequently leading to use of contraceptives.
It has been estimated that 99 percent of American women use contraception at some point in their lives, including at least 80 percent of Catholic women, even though the Catholic Church opposes birth control. With contraceptive coverage costing $600 to $1,200 a year, more than half the women who are 18 to 34 years old find it difficult to afford.
The Affordable Care Act addresses the nearly universal use of contraception, affordability, and its role in protecting women's health by preventing unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases, reducing abortions in the process. It makes contraception a free preventive health care service by requiring health insurance policies to cover it with no co-pays or deductibles.
But health insurance in this country is tied to employment, and the Catholic Church strenuously objected to including birth control coverage for female employees of its universities and hospitals, some of whom aren't Catholic. The church claimed that this policy violated its religious liberty by requiring it to pay for a health care service that is contrary to its dogma.
In reality, the church sought to impose its views on its female employees in order to violate their individual basic rights to make their own medical decisions. An employee's private and personal behavior is none of the employer's business, and choosing whether or not to use a contraceptive is an individual decision. The Affordable Care Act doesn't require anyone to use contraception. It only makes it available.
To avoid a protracted political mess, President Barack Obama last week announced a compromise, under which contraceptive coverage for employees of religious-affiliated institutions that object to birth control will be paid for by health insurance companies, with coverage beginning in August. But in any other industrialized country, such a compromise would have been unnecessary, for in these nations, health insurance isn't tied to employment and is financed through taxes under a system of universal coverage, such as Canada's single payer.
While Obama's compromise satisfied most Catholic Democrats, Republicans are continuing to wage their war on women's health, with presidential contenders Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich using the issue as a political football. The sexist extremes to which some Republicans are willing to go were illustrated by an amendment to a transportation bill by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), which seeks to allow any employer to refuse to cover any health care service they find religiously or "morally" objectionable. Blunt's amendment shows that single payer is ultimately what we need for health insurance and some Republicans have a mindset stuck in the Middle Ages.
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