The American right is so, so wrong

There’s a new hot topic in American politics, and for once it’s not a man in a sweater vest or the word ‘oops’. Instead the American electorate have been cornered into a debate on the morality of contraception, and who should be providing it.

President Obama is arguing for employers to cover contraception free of charge through health insurance. For organisations with a moral problem with contraception, the insurance companies will provide it directly. This means that all women with employer-provided health insurance will have free access to basic preventative medicine.

At first glance, this all seems very unproblematic. Surely in a country without universal healthcare, increasing access to basic care such as contraception is a hugely important move towards maintaining the health and wellbeing of women and their families? Yet, somehow, opponents of the policy don’t quite see it that way. They have claimed that to ask religious organisations to provide contraception would be an attack on their religious liberty. In other words, an organisation retains the right to dictate which types of medical care are appropriate. Employers should be allowed to exercise their religious liberty as freely as they like, even if they deprive millions of women of contraception in the process.

This is a problem. Religious liberty has nothing to do with a women’s right to birth control. These are two separate issues. Contraception should be a noncontroversial issue, but instead it is being portrayed as an assault on American values. Women should be free to make their own choices about their reproductive health, regardless of their employer. Opponents to Obama’s proposal want to take the right to make health-based decisions from the hands of women and put it into the hands of their employers.

Contraception use itself is highly personal. A survey found that 89% of Catholic women believe in expanding access to contraception, despite the widely-held belief that Catholics are consistently against it. Being a woman on contraception and having religious beliefs are not mutually exclusive, but Obama’s opposition seem to have blithely forgotten that.

The Blunt Amendment, which sought to allow employers to choose which healthcare they provide, was narrowly defeated in Congress on Thursday. Republicans are still bellowing from the rooftops, wild with indignation, but they have little to be indignant about. Obama’s plan makes allowances for religious organisations. There will be no contraception forced on those who oppose it.

It’s women who should be furious: important issues are being distorted in order to score political points. Politicians are dancing around in a self-righteous fervour, clamouring for the attention of the electorate. Shifting the contraception issue from a question of women’s freedom to a question of religious liberty illustrates the dangerous tendency towards political show-boating. Reproductive issues are being dressed up as moral problems. When Rick Santorum says that “contraception is not okay,” he suggests that the people in charge are dangerously out of touch with general opinion.

Meanwhile, Nadine Dorries has fuelled debate of her own in the UK, this time over abortion counselling. A recent proposal would qualify anti-abortion organisations to provide counselling. Furore has ensued, people have walked out and MPs are waving their arms around, wailing about what is ‘right’. But they are fighting over the idea of abortion rather than the reality. Women should have access to unbiased, objective counselling. That is the issue, not whether pro- or anti-abortion groups get to exert the most influence, or how many abortions will be carried out. Politicians are squabbling over the moral high ground, but British women are the ones who should be consulted.

UK policy may be far from perfect, but we shouldn’t take our contraceptive policy for granted. There were no women at the Congressional hearing on Obama’s plan. Santorum is telling anyone that will listen that contraception will make people do things “counter to how they are supposed to be.” Newt Gingrich thinks that contraception is “an attack on the Catholic church.”

Republicans may be playing up to the religious conservatives because the November election is looming, but from the outside looking in, it seems as though America is dangerously close to returning to the 1950s when it comes to reproductive health. Focusing on real concerns and consulting more women will bring about effective contraceptive policy. Distorting the issues and failing to give women the right to choose will not.