Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
beam me up scottie
beam me up scottie's Journal
beam me up scottie's Journal
May 11, 2015
When the Catholic Church owns your doctor: The insidious new threat to affordable birth control
Cross-posting from the other room, trotsky's thread didn't get much love so I'm reposting here.
When the Catholic Church owns your doctor: The insidious new threat to affordable birth control
Eight of the largest health systems in America are now Catholic-owned. More and more won't prescribe conraception
Patricia Miller
Angela Valavanis had already had one bad encounter with the Catholic health care system when St. Francis Hospital, the hospital in Evanston, Ill., where she delivered her second baby, refused to allow her OB/GYN to tie her tubes because of Catholic restrictions on the procedure. When she went to her doctor’s office for a check-up after the birth and asked about going back on the Pill, since she hadn’t gotten the sterilization she wanted, she got another shock: “My doctor told me that she couldn’t prescribe birth control because she had sold her practice to a Catholic health system,” said Angela. “My mouth dropped open. I was so confused to hear those words coming out of the mouth of an OB/GYN.”
An OB/GYN who can’t prescribe birth control? It’s not some bad joke. It could be a reality if your doctor’s practice is purchased by a Catholic health system that then imposes the Ethical & Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, a set of rules created by the U.S. Bishop’s Conference that prohibits doctors from doing everything from prescribing the Pill to performing sterilizations or abortions.
...
And with Catholic hospital systems accounting for eight of the 10 of the largest nonprofit health systems in the U.S., these hospitals are poised to become major owners of doctors’ offices, which could severely impede access to contraceptives if doctors are forced to follow the Directives. “The more we see these Catholic systems buying up these practices, the more we are going to see what Angela saw,” predicted Lorie Chaiten, director of the Illinois ACLU’s Reproductive Rights Project, who notes that such refusals are legal under Illinois’ Health Care Right of Conscience Act.
...
But for some women, changing doctors may not be an option. Health insurers are becoming increasingly restrictive about which hospitals and doctors a patient is allowed to use and may charge a steep penalty for going out of the network of preferred providers. Smaller towns and rural areas may not have a large selection of OB/GYNs. The ACLU is backing a measure in the Illinois Legislature that would require health systems to tell patients beforehand what services they don’t provide and where they can get them. Chaiten also encourages women who have been denied reproductive health services for religious reason to report it to the ACLU, which is tracking this trend.
Ironically, Angela’s experience with her OB/GYN wasn’t her last run-in with Catholic health care. After she was refused a tubal ligation and a prescription for birth control, Angela’s husband decided to get a vasectomy. His doctor, who was also part of the Catholic system, said his practice couldn’t do the procedure or make a referral. “The whole situation is so unbelievable to me. I had no idea these limitations occurred,” she says. “When I tell my friends about it, they say it’s medieval. We have to worry that if they keep buying up all these practices, it will get harder and harder to find someone who can prescribe birth control.”
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/11/when_the_catholic_church_owns_your_doctor_the_insidious_new_threat_to_affordable_birth_control/
Eight of the largest health systems in America are now Catholic-owned. More and more won't prescribe conraception
Patricia Miller
Angela Valavanis had already had one bad encounter with the Catholic health care system when St. Francis Hospital, the hospital in Evanston, Ill., where she delivered her second baby, refused to allow her OB/GYN to tie her tubes because of Catholic restrictions on the procedure. When she went to her doctor’s office for a check-up after the birth and asked about going back on the Pill, since she hadn’t gotten the sterilization she wanted, she got another shock: “My doctor told me that she couldn’t prescribe birth control because she had sold her practice to a Catholic health system,” said Angela. “My mouth dropped open. I was so confused to hear those words coming out of the mouth of an OB/GYN.”
An OB/GYN who can’t prescribe birth control? It’s not some bad joke. It could be a reality if your doctor’s practice is purchased by a Catholic health system that then imposes the Ethical & Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, a set of rules created by the U.S. Bishop’s Conference that prohibits doctors from doing everything from prescribing the Pill to performing sterilizations or abortions.
...
And with Catholic hospital systems accounting for eight of the 10 of the largest nonprofit health systems in the U.S., these hospitals are poised to become major owners of doctors’ offices, which could severely impede access to contraceptives if doctors are forced to follow the Directives. “The more we see these Catholic systems buying up these practices, the more we are going to see what Angela saw,” predicted Lorie Chaiten, director of the Illinois ACLU’s Reproductive Rights Project, who notes that such refusals are legal under Illinois’ Health Care Right of Conscience Act.
...
But for some women, changing doctors may not be an option. Health insurers are becoming increasingly restrictive about which hospitals and doctors a patient is allowed to use and may charge a steep penalty for going out of the network of preferred providers. Smaller towns and rural areas may not have a large selection of OB/GYNs. The ACLU is backing a measure in the Illinois Legislature that would require health systems to tell patients beforehand what services they don’t provide and where they can get them. Chaiten also encourages women who have been denied reproductive health services for religious reason to report it to the ACLU, which is tracking this trend.
Ironically, Angela’s experience with her OB/GYN wasn’t her last run-in with Catholic health care. After she was refused a tubal ligation and a prescription for birth control, Angela’s husband decided to get a vasectomy. His doctor, who was also part of the Catholic system, said his practice couldn’t do the procedure or make a referral. “The whole situation is so unbelievable to me. I had no idea these limitations occurred,” she says. “When I tell my friends about it, they say it’s medieval. We have to worry that if they keep buying up all these practices, it will get harder and harder to find someone who can prescribe birth control.”
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/11/when_the_catholic_church_owns_your_doctor_the_insidious_new_threat_to_affordable_birth_control/
May 1, 2015
Leave it to an anti-theist to point out the obvious: "when you’re trying to engineer an egalitarian society, messing with nonexistent variables doesn’t seem all that helpful."
An Anti-Theist’s Interpretation Of The Bible’s Opinion On Same-Sex Marriage
An Anti-Theist’s Interpretation Of The Bible’s Opinion On Same-Sex Marriage
April 29, 2015 by Peter Mosley
Here’s my interpretation of the Bible’s opinion on Same-Sex marriage:
Anything derogatory it says about same-sex marriage is nothing more than prejudice against gay individuals by primitive tribes.
...
So, what I’d like you to do is throw your Bible away. Because, honestly, this is ridiculous. Why the heck would you hang on to that ancient rulebook crafted by bigots? It’s time to look past that to people who exist and who love each other.
I guess that’s why I’m an anti-theist. I see progressives and conservatives and fatheists arguing over what God supposedly “REALLY” said, and I’m standing here like — can we move pass this? Can we move past trying to get to the “true” meaning of texts and start looking at, like, the flesh and blood people right in front of us?
...
I mean, this is absurd. I’m tired of being trapped in a stone age when there are people in the current age who want to show their love for each other.
Let’s quit making this so damn complicated. Two people love each other. They want to get married. Awesome.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/barrierbreaker/an-anti-theists-interpretation-of-the-bibles-opinion-on-same-sex-marriage/
April 29, 2015 by Peter Mosley
Here’s my interpretation of the Bible’s opinion on Same-Sex marriage:
Anything derogatory it says about same-sex marriage is nothing more than prejudice against gay individuals by primitive tribes.
...
So, what I’d like you to do is throw your Bible away. Because, honestly, this is ridiculous. Why the heck would you hang on to that ancient rulebook crafted by bigots? It’s time to look past that to people who exist and who love each other.
I guess that’s why I’m an anti-theist. I see progressives and conservatives and fatheists arguing over what God supposedly “REALLY” said, and I’m standing here like — can we move pass this? Can we move past trying to get to the “true” meaning of texts and start looking at, like, the flesh and blood people right in front of us?
...
I mean, this is absurd. I’m tired of being trapped in a stone age when there are people in the current age who want to show their love for each other.
Let’s quit making this so damn complicated. Two people love each other. They want to get married. Awesome.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/barrierbreaker/an-anti-theists-interpretation-of-the-bibles-opinion-on-same-sex-marriage/
Leave it to an anti-theist to point out the obvious: "when you’re trying to engineer an egalitarian society, messing with nonexistent variables doesn’t seem all that helpful."
April 3, 2015
?
[font color=black size=3 face=Georgia]"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994[/font]
November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996
Please post your favourite quotes and pictures.
Carl Sagan Appreciation Thread
?
[font color=black size=3 face=Georgia]"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994[/font]
November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996
Please post your favourite quotes and pictures.
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHometown: The Green Mountain State
Current location: Red state in the bible belt
Member since: Sun Oct 10, 2004, 08:05 PM
Number of posts: 57,349
