A short essay donated by Susan Humphreys
"Part of Nature's Plan:"
Thoughts on the HHS Mandate
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The nation (or more precisely the ultra conservatives) are in an uproar over the decision made by Health and Human Services to require companies that provide health insurance for their employees, to provide free access to birth control as part of their health care package. Exemption was made to churches but not to church run businesses/schools/institutions/agencies that have employees that are not part of that particular faith tradition.
The objection the Catholic Church makes to birth control is that it interferes with natures plan. Sex is for procreation and if a person gets pregnant that is all part of natures plan and man is not to interfere.
I wonder if the health insurance plans the Catholic Church offers its workers provide for fertility treatments for infertile couples? Whether drugs for male sexual dysfunction are covered? Aren’t such afflictions just another part of “natures plan”?
I wonder why the Catholic Church would object to homosexuality? Again isn’t that just another part of “natures plan”? A natural form of birth control.
Then too the Catholic Church seems to think that bringing children into the world in third world countries, knowing they will die of starvation before their first birthday, is also “part of natures plan”.
I think that our complex brain is also “part of natures plan”. It is a brain that gives us the ability to question why, to think logically, to make inferences from one situation to another, to think in abstract terms, to be able to tell the difference between objective and subjective “truths”, to see the world through another person’s eyes, to tell the difference between good and bad, moral and immoral, ethical and unethical, virtuous and non-virtuous thoughts and actions.
It has given us the ability to understand germs and infections and the antibiotics and treatments needed to overcome both. So that we don’t have to let “natures plan” take her full course leading to lifelong disabilities or death. It has given us the ability to understand complex issues such as population dynamics, carrying capacity of the land, local and global economics, pollution, resource issues, weather patterns and climate change, how things grow and what causes things not to grow, how to build levees to protect from catastrophic floods, early warning radio systems to alert of dangerous tornados so we can seek shelter, all sorts of things that give us the ability to make sure that we aren’t held hostage or succumb to “natures plan”.
If the Catholic Church or ultra conservative Protestants approve of some of these that interfere with “natures plan” it is pure hypocrisy to object to birth control on the grounds that it interferes with natures plan.
Originally posted: 2012-OCT-12
Author: Susan Humphreys
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