Denial

Denial: Just say no and it wouldn’t be so!!

It’s a big lie!

It keeps people from seeing the true.

                                                                              ghh50

Standard Speaker E-Edition

Catholic women must speak out on birth control

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Mymother, a devout Catholic, had heart trouble before having six children in seven years during the 1950s. Exhaustion, combined with her weak heart, contributed to bouts of pneumonia and the removal of a lung.

Afterward, she tried to talk to my equally devout father about using birth control. It upset him. “We’ll go to hell,” he said. “I’m in hell now,” she replied, and took a bus 75 miles to Rochester, N.Y., to obtain contraceptives. Myparents had no more children. Mymother made certain her four daughters had no qualms about using birth control. Still, I wonder whether having such a large family so quickly contributed to her death in her 50s.

Nowi aminmy 50s with two children of my own. Recently, American Catholic bishops ordered priests to read a letter at Mass denouncing as a violation of religious liberty a proposed federal birth control mandate. Although parish churches are exempt, religious institutions that accept federal funds (and employ many non-catholics) would have had to make available free contraceptives through health coverage. The controversy forced compromise; the Obama administration passed the mandate onto insurance companies.

Yet the bishops remain unsatisfied. The use of birth control is against Catholic teaching, a sin and part of “a culture of death,” as Newyork’s Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan has said.

Butthe majority of Romancatholic women— 98 percent according to one poll — have used birth control. Likeme, manysuchwomen have receivedperiodic fundraising letters fromthe churchusually addressed to thewomanof the house. They’ve enrolled their childrenincatholic schoolsand watchedtheir childrenparticipate in the sacraments.

Like me, manywould consider themselves irresponsible mothers if they did not tell their children to ignore the church’s teaching on birth control — particularly when using birth control makes abortions far less likely.

Of 100 Catholic women friends and acquaintances I could name, 99 use artificial birth control. But have we spoken out? No. Instead, we have spoken to each other,

The church has made us Galileo, who, legend says, whispered, “But still it moves!” when theologians forced him to recant his discovery that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Ladies, whispering is nolonger good enough. Wecatholicwomen need to raise ourvoices, acknowledge thevast disconnectbetween Catholic teachingandthe reality of our lives, andwe need to do it now.

We need to support the availability of birth control in letters to the editor. We need to write to the White House and Congress. And, we need to say, with respect, “I disagree, Father. I use birth control, and I’ve told my children to use it, too.”

Otherwise, the priests, bishops, Republican presidential candidates and scores of male commentators will get away with the pretense that they are speaking for us. They aren’t. Speaking out is uncomfortable. We don’t want the hierarchy to accuse us of being “cafeteria Catholics” or denounce us in other ways. We don’t want to debate canon law. We don’t feel like experts. Yet we are: On being women. Menwho denounce birth control in the name of religious liberty will never feel labor pains. They will never understand what we knowabout being a woman, a wife or a mother.

We are the authorities on the importance of birth control to our health and freedom. We understand pregnancy as far more than a nine-month inconvenience.

One-third of all U.S. pregnancies have medical complications. Thematernal death rate is higher here than in 40 other countries. Why? Alack of birth control and poor availability of health care, two factors that the Obama administration is trying to change against vehement rightwing opposition — and their allies in the clergy.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has advocated allowing states to decide the legality of birth control. Newt Gingrich has spoken in favor of declaring fertilized eggs persons, making some birth control illegal. Mitt Romney pledged to end a federal law that provides family planning to millions of women.

We need to hear from the great, as yet untapped voices of sanity on these issues: the legions of Catholic womenwho disagree.

Like my mother, they are strong, smart, they use birth control — and they vote.

Silence is a luxury we can no longer afford.

Standard Speaker E-Edition