God and Woman in the Nanny State
By Mary Theroux • Monday February 13, 2012 11:34 AM PDT • 8 Comments
If there is one thing to be hoped will come out of the current controversy over the proposed mandate for religious organizations to pay for free pregnancy prevention and termination coverage for their employees, it is that women and American religious leaders and believers come to realize that the state is not a benevolent, Godly force, and is, rather, a threat to both of their sovereignties, to be constantly and consistently guarded against.
As a baby boomer, I was in the early days of heavy rhetoric for women’s lib. The arguments for universal access to safe and legal abortions were compelling, and couched strictly in terms of its benefit to women and children: no more would women be put at risk of death or have their future reproductivity destroyed by illegal, back-alley abortions; no more would they be forced into shotgun weddings or otherwise have to bear the lifelong consequences of incest, rape, or youthful indiscretions; no longer would unwanted children be subjected to lives of violence and crushing poverty. At the same time, value-free sex education and access to contraceptives in middle and upper schools was promised to make abortion rare. “No more unplanned pregnancies;” no more innocent girls impregnated by unscrupulous boys taking advantage of their ignorance of the “facts of life.”
And yet, a funny thing happened on the way to women’s liberation: I see around me today hordes of 13 year-old girls dressed up and serving as sex objects for the boys whose raging hormones no longer need be stilled by cold showers or hours of hard, sweaty sports. A friend recently lamented the difficulty she has in finding non-”sexy” clothes for her 5 year-old daughter.
This wasn’t exactly what we had in mind when we talked about securing equal rights.
Unfortunately, the promises of universal sex-education and access to contraception leading to abortion’s becoming increasingly rare have also failed to materialize. According to the Guttmacher Institute, since being legalized nationally in 1973, an estimated 50 million abortions have been performed in the United States, with approximately 1,210,000 performed in 2008—a rate that remains essentially flat.
According to studies by the Brookings Institute and Heritage Foundation, and based on government statistics, in 1965, 24% of black babies and 3.1% of white babies were born to single mothers. By 2008, the out-of-wedlock birth rate for the entire population was 40.6%, with 28.6% among white non-Hispanic women, 52.5% among Hispanics, and 72.3% among blacks. With the poverty rate for single parents with children at 36.5%, and only 6.4% for married couples with children, this is the single greatest factor for the explosive increase in children living in poverty.
It is entirely appropriate therefore to ask if these sad numbers are the result of working women lacking access to no-cost pregnancy prevention and termination under their employers’ insurance plans, the solution for which is the mandate now being proposed.
Or is there another hypothesis at work here? Is the Washington elite thinking behind the mandate something like: “Look, we tried educating them. We tried providing them ready access to birth control and abortion. And yet these people keep having children they shouldn’t have and that they can’t afford!”
Is it really just “right-wing” scare tactics to see a long shadow of eugenics at play? Whose babies, after all, are they hoping to prevent? And if “free” pregnancy prevention and termination don’t solve “the problem,” what then? When Washington mandates family planning, whose family plans will be sanctioned, and whose denied?
Maybe all women should be horrified by this mandate, stop dead in our tracks and scream: “No!” No, we don’t want our boss or federal bureaucrats in our doctor’s office: we aren’t dependent little girls who have to be guided by our “elders and betters” in how we take care of our bodies. We can be fully-conscious decision-makers over our own healthcare and reproduction. And for those of our sisters who need help in meeting life’s challenges and dealing with risks and consequences, we can provide appropriate assistance that doesn’t require the take-over of every woman’s health choices by Washington.
Meanwhile, it is highly unlikely that “ObamaCare” would have garnered the support needed for its passage without the endorsement by church leaders across the spectrum. Preaching “social justice,” American church leaders actively supported universal healthcare mandates. To help build even greater support, at the height of public debate the Department of Health and Human Services Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships hosted the President in conference calls with religious leaders, urging them to preach for its passage from their pulpits, and offering supporting propaganda to distribute to their congregants.
Imagine then the surprise to these same church leaders: they thought they were enlisting to further a “faith-based initiative,” and find instead they have furthered a secular theocracy; with the new law they helped pass now being exercised in ways they find objectionable! (And the compromise “tweak” the President has proposed—for “insurance companies” to bear the cost of providing free pregnancy prevention and termination—is disingenuous at best: most larger denominations self-insure.)
Perhaps now church leaders will awaken to the folly of having overlaid “God and country” in their ministries, from sending off soldiers to fight for “Godly” causes, to American flags gracing sanctuaries, prayer breakfasts built around showcasing politicians, and religious leaders signing on to policy positions whose consequences hurt the very suffering Christ came to serve.
As the sociologist Rodney Stark has shown in an exceptional body of work, history bears the scars of the continual tension between what he has dubbed the “church of piety” vs. the “church of power.” From Mayan temples’ massive public human sacrifices holding threats to the empire in check, to the state-monopoly German church’s “patriotic” support of Hitler, when the church allies with the ruler, both the church and the people it serves come out the losers.
Let American church leaders take a lesson from history and from their current experience and renounce this unholy alliance for now and the future.
And let both women and the church speak truth to power in leading a renaissance for a civil society consistent with natural law, in which rights are bestowed not from Washington, but, inalienably and equally, from God.
Tags: American History, Charity, Civil Society, Culture, Education, Family, Fascism, Healthcare, Insurance, Morality, Nanny State, Natural Law, Personal Liberty, Poverty, Progressivism, Propaganda, Racism, Religion, Urban Issues, Welfare 
There is a world-wide, faith-based organization that has never participated in the un-holy alliance described above. It has spoken “Truth to power” for 2000 years. You may count on it to recognize God given inalienable rights, and to do so powerfully, expecting no thanks for the effort.
Jim Dyer | Feb 14, 2012 | Reply
Good article, thanks!
Tom Howerton | Feb 14, 2012 | Reply
This is an excellent and accurate look at how we arrived at the sad state we’re in. The push for women’s rights has not helped women, it has has taken them back — especially poor women. Thank you, too, for making the point about the eugenics impulse in all this. Although the supporters of abortion would never admit it, it is absolutely true.
Andrea | Feb 14, 2012 | Reply
Firstly, great article! Exceptionally well reasoned, logically presented and without a doubt, honest to its core.
However, allow me a bit of ‘gotcha’ if you will, concerning the excellent elucidation of the foundational rationales for “Women’s Lib” and the outcomes.
We ‘mere men’ (at that time ‘mere boys’) were the VICTIMS of ‘Women’s Lib’ and CONTINUE to be the victims of it and its nefarious supporters.
Men are STILL presented as the ENTIRE Foundational Cause for ALL the ‘woes/problems’ of women, and which women face ‘on a daily basis’.
Allow me to point out that while I am adamantly opposed to the continued MURDER of unborn children, I DO take no little delight in the frantic problems of ‘modern career women’; the problems resulting from ‘having it all’.
You women have gotten that which you demanded: unfettered access to abortion, including Partial Birth Abortion.
You’ve gotten access to board rooms, management, the Halls of Power in both business and congress.
You’ve now ‘got it all’!!
Allow me to remind you of an old axiom we men have lived with for millenia:
“Isn’t ‘success’ just a bitch?”
Congrats on the success for women from the ‘Women’s Lib Struggle’....you’ve destroyed society, minimized and emasculated men (look at any commercials for services, goods, employment for the absence of men in them), helped murder 1.25 million babies a year, and empowered a totalitarian government movement in the USA.
Congratulations on your superior success.
Cheers
JR Bailey | Feb 14, 2012 | Reply
Maybe, just maybe, the Progressive movement over the last 50+ years used the women’s movement to buy votes thru subsidizing out of wedlock mothers to have babies creating a new government industry ... And we thought abortion was a killer.
Ken Jendryka | Feb 14, 2012 | Reply
Man, that Gubmint sure is sneaky. You have to be proactively searching for truth and enlightenment, continually fact-checking and getting multiple angles on an aissue, not just content to lap up what the politicans and mainstream media sling your way.
I agree with JR Bailey’s comment in many ways. Also let me add that the women’s lib and other civil rights movements started off with best intentions, but seem to end up being ways for minority groups to use the power of big government and popular media to demand treatment that is no longer “equal” but borders on “preferential” for their group. The government should stay out of the business of trying to make anything “more fair” for anyone. Of course, that buys them less votes...what am I thinking?
Good observation, by the way, on the religious support of Obamacare. I think a lot of people of faith people have lost their way (or been led astray), and rather than standing for something, have fallen for just about anything, becoming “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness...” (Eph 4:14) Inspired wisdom has been tossed out the window in favor of the political climate, to “go along” with things (to “fear man”). It is therefore no surprise to me that they find themselves double-crossed after supporting big government initiative. It all leads toward a worship of Man, the State, the Government, the Society, whatever “god,” before God.
I also remember one of my co-workers, a staunch abortion opponent and researcher, telling me about how so many of the Planned Parenthood clinics were situated in poor black inner-city areas. Seems like those folks should be up in arms about that. Almost seems tantamount to the government waging a form of genocide within our own borders.
What’s that quote that keeps bouncing around the ‘Net? “A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take everything away.”
Darren Larson | Feb 14, 2012 | Reply
Let me get this straight. The Catholic Church, acting as a business hires an employee who is not Catholic and alters their health insurance policy according to Catholic dogma. So if you work for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, will you support their right to exclude blood transfusions? And it will be okay with you if Scientology excludes coverage for antidepressants? Is it only a woman’s right to decide when she gets pregnant that you will throw at the feet of the religious extremists?
Debbie | Feb 24, 2012 | Reply
Hi, Debbie:
First of all, a primary reason the healthcare industry is such a mess today is that health insurance is provided by employers, rooted in World War II wage and price controls:
So, the first best solution would be to get employers out of the provision of health insurance altogether, and free the insurance industry to actually compete in providing a full range of insurance policies directly to consumers.
Short of that, and more directly addressing your point, employees making their decision to accept a position weigh the wage offered against the benefits package, with employers who don’t offer benefits having to pay more on a wage basis to attract the same employee who would take less cash compensation for a job offering better benefits. So if you know that you will have to supplement a Catholic employer’s healthcare insurance package in order to have all the coverage you want, you will demand more pay to accept a position similar to one offered by an employer whose insurance coverage includes those services. No one is forcing anyone to take a job with a Catholic or Jehovah’s Witness or other religious employer.
But, again, the real solution is to move away from the increasing requirement that everyone have a “one size fits all” insurance policy, which, in the end, will really result in a healthcare system that pleases no one. (See, for example, my previous post, “‘Single-payer’ Health Care Requires Evermore Patient Patients.”)
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Feb 25, 2012 | Reply