As you may have heard, Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced last Friday that not only will regulations under the Affordable Care Act require all insurance plans to cover contraception and other women’s preventive care without co-pay or deductible, but religiously affiliated schools, hospitals and organizations will have to comply as well. In response to this, the Conference of Catholic Bishops is leading a major backlash against the Obama administration. As part of this, they have published numerous anti-woman Letters to the Editor in major newspapers across the country – with no response from young women.
This is unacceptable and we must take action and demand equal representation on their pages.
Here are some helpful tips and resources to assist you as begin writing letters from your campus leaders or on behalf of your feminist activist group on campus. Don’t forget to send us your letters at campusteam@feminist.org – we’ll be putting them together in a blog post!!
- Consider writing major print news outlets like The Washington Post, USA Today, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the New York Times. Local papers are good too, but for this action we really want to get your letters onto the pages of the national print media. If you want to try a different paper, simply search for the newspaper name followed by “letter to the editor” and the first hit you get should have instructions. We also suggest that you poke around their articles from the last week to see what they have already published on the subject.
- Check out these tips from the ACLU on writing a successful Letter to the Editor.
- Be sure to keep it somewhat short – most LTEs are only about 250 words or they won’t be printed!
- If you don’t feel comfortable writing as an individual, you can also sign it on behalf of your campus or activist group.
- Try and reference op-eds or misleading information from previous articles in that newspaper, such as these from USA Today and The Washington Post (which is especially bad because it’s from their editorial board – eek!).
- Personal stories of those affected by these regulations are always great!
- Suggested messages to get you started…
- Public opinion is clearly on the side of open access to birth control to prevent unplanned pregnancy, and yet the discourse is being dominated by a handful of powerful Catholic Bishops.
- 99% of sexually active women have used birth control during their lives, including 98% of Catholic women.
- 75% of American voters support access to birth control.
- Birth control is the most common prescription for women ages 18-44 and is used on average for 30 years of a woman’s life, at an average co-pay of $15-50 per month.
- For every $1 spent in public funding for family planning services, $4 is saved on other services.
- About 49% of pregnancies in the United States are unintended. The personal, economic, and emotional costs to women associated with unintended pregnancy are immeasurable.
- In the face of all scientific evidence, women have a right to act moral agents and decision makers in their own lives without unnecessary barriers to access. These regulations under the Affordable Care Act will eliminate these barriers for millions of women.
- Students, clients and employees of religious organizations and schools are not required to be followers of the religion, so why should their health care be dictated by its rules? And judging by the fact that 98% of Catholic women use birth control at some point in their lives, even their followers need access to birth control.
- The Catholic Bishops are using their influence to dictate the law of the land based on their religious principles without regard for separation for church and state. Religious freedom is an individual’s right to practice whatever form of religious they so choose, not for the leaders of a religious institution to manipulate our federal laws and regulations.
- Young women take contraception for a variety of reasons aside from preventing pregnancy including treating endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome, preventing cancer, and relief for irregular/painful periods.
Women must have the right to choose for themselves. This is a decision that must be made by the individual person and their choice is what matters.
Enough is enough! The creator gave all people the right to a free will and the ability to choose what is right for them. No one has the right to impose her or his will on another. Not the government, not the religions, not anyone. Teach all you want, raise children to have values and make educated choices, but do not impose the unreasonable thinking of the minority on the whole.
I was born and raised Catholic, and because of the overt double standard, the endless stream of hipocracy among priests, and the continual backlash against women, I could no longer support this church.
President Obama, stand up! Don’t be pushed around by a group of self serving hippocrites. Women in America are continuing to count on you to support choice!
I urge you to stand firm against the Catholic bishops, and in defense of womens’ right to birth control !
Banning Birth control is how the catholic church gets no taxes, they are the handmaidens of imperialism since colonization and help kings and dictators alike beef up the population for slavery and war. over-population= poverty= low wages, ah and there is the crux, it’s what the wealthy want – low ans slave wages and church inquisition of midwives who taught women their own bodies birth control and gave herbs for same were the objects of the woman’s holocaust; then priests took over their wise woman advise and male doctors took over birth.
Women need to know they are lowest paid, and have little opportunity because of the diligence of men’s clubs= religion!
Women need the right to choose various types of birth control. This must be a right of all women–human dignity requires this. Human justice requires this. Human and civil rights require this.
Natalie Sokoloff, Professor Emerita of Sociology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Religion must be a guide, not a mandate. The mandates given to women, in particular, to try to control our bodies and minds have been in force for so many thousands of years that we forget that as human beings–living, breathing. already formed human beings–we have the right to make our decisions based on the needs we have, not what someone tells us we must do or believe.
Your god will not punish you for living the best way you know how. Your gods will not be angry if you try to care for the earth, the rest of the population, your own self. And if that life includes using birth control to assure your health and well-being, you must not be scared that your god will be angry. Those values of anger and disappointment and wrath are the interpretations of people without a vagina, without a uterus, without compassion for women.
Women have the right to decide over their bodies and their lives. The church should not be imposing their patriarchal values on them. I was born a Catholic too but I left the church after realizing how they have oppressed women throughout history and how they continue to have control over women and children. We need to get together and fight for our rights. Bishops are not going to stop this.
The very least our society owes women is the right to control their lives and plan their families and occupations as they choose. It is in the best interests of all, financially and with integrity, to support and finance birth control, child care, and fertility services.
Birth control is indeed very important nowadays because of our growing population. It’s a way to fight poverty because of over population, it’s very important to let every people know the important of this thing.