Modesty taught me that my first priority needed to be making sure I wasn’t a “stumbling block” to men. Not being sexually attractive was the most important thing I had to consider when buying clothes, putting them on, maintaining my weight (can’t have things getting tight!), and moving around (can’t wiggle those hips, or let a little knee show). Modesty taught me that what I looked like was what mattered most of all. Not what I thought. Not how I felt. Not what I was capable of doing. Worrying about modesty, and being vigilantnotto be sexy, made me even more obsessed with my looks than the women in short shorts and spray tans I was taught to hate
Allowing institutions to deny their employees contraceptive coverage is discrimination, not religious liberty. And what’s more, it’s not good sense. Making women’s health secondary to the bishops’ policy preferences serves no one – except the bishops.
Eaton County Circuit Judge Calvin Oosterhaven has issued a temporary restraining order against two Michigan abortion clinics that are charged with practicing medicine as an unlawfully-formed corporation.
Coercive sterilizations and castration are at the extreme end of a spectrum that also includes criminal sanctions for drug use during pregnancy and barring LBGT individuals from in-vitro fertilization services and adoption, as well as a host of other policies geared at making pregnancy and parenting difficult for those deemed unworthy.
There is another 99 percent group in our country, distinct from but inextricably entwined with the now more familiar #99Percent. I refer to the 99 percent of American women who have ever had sexual intercourse and have used a birth control method at least some of the time.
According to a New York Times article today, the White House has now publicly confirmed that President Obama is considering caving to demands by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and other far right religious groups on the requirement that insurance plans under health reform cover birth control without a co-pay.
Today, more than 20 organizations representing millions of Latinos sent a letter to President Obama urging him to support and maintain the recent Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) decision requiring health plans to cover preventive health care, including cancer screenings, immunizations, and birth control, with no co-pays.
