The Christian Churches have long sermonized a story. It goes, one day as Jesus was traveling around preforming his works he came upon a town in which a woman had suffered from menstrual bleeding for twelve years.
In the time of this woman, this was not just seen as a problem by her society, but a scourge, keeping her from love, marriage, or a family. Leviticus 20:18 tells, “If a man lies with a woman during her menstrual period… Both of them shall be cut off from among their people.”
However, the exiled woman told herself that if she could only touch Jesus’ garments she would be healed. So she made her way through the crowds who had socially exiled her for over a decade, trying to touch Jesus. When she did, she was instantly cured by his supernatural power.
Now, two millenniums after Christians believe the healer, Jesus, has left us, science has enabled us to help others as he was said to. In modern days, the bleeding woman may have used the pill to alleviate her symptoms. However, there are some in the church that believe her act is immoral, and are hell-bent on diminishing its use. They would rather see women suffer than ask themselves, what would Jesus do?
The newest challenge to a woman’s personal right to birth control comes in the form of the churches resistance to provide contraceptives to it’s employees through its insurance plan, just as every other business in the United States is mandated to do. They claim that such a mandate would pose a threat to the religious rights of their institutions.
Ignoring the irony, in the fact that contraceptives are the greatest from of prevention against the churches greatest political foe, abortion, the pill cures a myriad of different ailments outside of pregnancy.
Those include, but are not limited to reduced menstrual cramps and bleeding, prevention of bone thinning, endometrial and ovarian cancers, serious infection in the ovaries, iron deficiency anemia, cysts in the breasts and ovaries, and premenstrual symptoms including headaches and depression.
However, it seems that the church is able to come to terms with subjecting women to these ailments if it means a greater production of future followers. This policy makes it so that the women of the church are treated more as reproductive assets, than equals. Although, it should be noted that the pill also offers protection against pelvic inflammatory disease, which often leads to infertility.
Not only is this illogical, and more of a religious shunning of modern medicine than a true concern about the rights of faith based institutions, but it sets a dangerous precedent for all government regulations which apply to religious institutions.
Are we to eliminate minimum wage, child labor laws, and anti-work place discrimination laws for religious institutions as long as they could somehow justify it through some skewed interpretation of a Bronze Age religious text?
The church seems to have this idea that the only use for contraceptives is non-marital promiscuity, and that the availability of them will automatically lead to their employees sexual mania. However, at the end of the day, it is the employee’s choice. Government agencies aren’t force-feeding church employees the pill, but are only trying to insure that they are all entitled to this basic healthcare asset.
It is for the right of every employee to decide how he or she wants to live their life, whether they work in a church or a brothel, and instead of playing moral totalitarian the church should remember that the Bible gave man, and women free will to exercise however they choose.
