Under the Affordable Care Act, almost all employers must provide health insurance to their employees. Along with this, all health insurance companies must cover contraceptive costs for women at no additional charge to their plans. So, indirectly, most employers are required to provide contraception to their employees. If a religious nonprofit employer objects to contraception for faith-based reasons, they are permitted to submit a one-page form to the federal government, allowing an insurance company to provide the birth control coverage directly to the employees without going through the religious nonprofit. Government officials will find a third-party insurer, without the involvement of the employer, to pay for and administer the contraceptive coverage.

Various religious nonprofit groups, most notably the Little Sisters of the Poor, have been speaking out against this, claiming that simply acting around them to provide employees with birth control does not remove them from the scenario. They claim that filling out the form is still facilitating something against their religious beliefs. The government argues that the accommodation removes them from the requirement, and this doesn’t qualify as a “substantial burden” according to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Supreme Court case Zubik vs. Burwell is a consolidation of seven cases objecting to the same type of ruling.

This case is being closely watched for different reasons. Some watch this case with arguments of women’s rights ready to fire off their tongues. Others say this case is the cross section of the pro-life movement and religious liberties, and still others see this as an example of religion and government overlapping where they should not.

In regards to this issue, The Atlantic published an article, titled “Women’s Health Takes a Backseat to Religion Again.” While the feminist in me itches to fight for women’s rights in this dissonance, something larger is at hand, something that, dare I say, matters more than women’s rights–something we here at Eastern refer to as justice. Before anyone can make rules about contraception, it is imperative that consumers know what is referred to as “contraception” is not always contraceptive.

Many people believe that birth control simply blocks the sperm from reaching the egg, and thus prevents pregnancy. However, it’s quite a bit more complicated than that. The most common birth control pills are varying concentrations of two hormones, estrogen and progesterone. Depending on the point in her menstrual cycle at which a woman takes this pill, it can in fact block ovulation and prevent fertilization altogether. In this case, the birth control is acting as a contraceptive. However, there is no simple way for a woman to know when her body is in this stage of her cycle; therefore, there is no guarantee that the ingested hormones are acting as contraception. If ovulation is not blocked, the estrogen has a negative feedback effect on the hypothalamus, which in turn prevents implantation. If the sperm and egg meet and cannot implant, the free-floating zygote is excreted from the body and an abortion occurs.

Conception is the moment a sperm and an egg together form a human life. I believe that life begins at egg activation, a more defined moment than conception. Embryonic development is a cascade of events, so there is no other reasonable moment in which “it” becomes a person than when that cascade begins, or is “activated.” The body develops from head to toe once this chain of events begins, so to pinpoint a later developmental stage in which one becomes a person wouldn’t make sense.

So what does all of this have to do with the Zubik v. Burwell case? I strongly believe that before any decisions on contraception are made, one needs to have a thorough understanding of what, in fact, contraception is. The “birth control” pill Ella is intended to “prevent pregnancy” up to five days after unprotected sex. It is called an “emergency contraceptive.” This is a completely false claim, for there is no way to prevent egg activation five days after the fact. I don’t think certain birth control methods (except for condoms and other true contraceptives) should be provided by religious nonprofits, because I don’t think they should be administered at all. If there is no way to be certain that a pill is not an abortifacient, it should not be legal, much less given freely to whomever requests it. Some say this claim is based on my religious beliefs and therefore shouldn’t be forced on everyone, and while my faith is the most important foundation of my life, this is rooted in something far simpler–justice. We shouldn’t argue about when life begins, for life is a continuum from the moment of egg activation. We shouldn’t argue about whether employers should provide health insurance that includes birth control, because any birth control method that one cannot know for certain is contraceptive should not be legal; to provide any pill with an outcome of murder is ludicrous.

Sources: The Atlantic, drugs.com, National Center for Biotechnology Information, SCOTUSblog.com

On Feminism And The Fight For Racial Equality

If you consider yourself an advocate for equality, you don’t get to pick and choose whom you want that equality for; that defeats the point. You can’t say you long for equality in this world, then only fight for people who look, talk, dress, and live like you. In Erika Sánchez’s article, “How Feminism Continues to Fail Women of Color,” she writes, “Feminism without intersectionality is simply self-serving. Women who fret about climbing the corporate ladder and shattering the class [sic] ceiling, but who are indifferent to the violence, poverty and discrimination that women of color face on a daily basis are looking out for themselves—or at most, trying to protect people just like them.” This is such an important message. Feminism is taking over our culture, and that is such a wonderfully empowering thing. However, feminism means equality for all, not simply equality for those who are heard the loudest and seen the most. The majority always has the power, always has the most prominent voice, and that is the danger. We see feminism almost everywhere now, and while that is a huge step, we are mostly seeing a middle-class white woman’s views on what equality would look like, and we are mostly hearing a white woman speak about injustices she has faced. When I think about feminist celebrities, I immediately think of Taylor Swift, Emma Watson, and Zooey Deschanel, for when they speak, their words are broadcast and effortlessly enter into my world. I know women of color speak out against gender and racial discrimination, so why don’t I hear those words equally as loud or as frequently?

Sánchez shares her own experience talking with “a very accomplished older white woman….While I sympathized with her struggles as a professional woman, she was unwilling to see how my identity as a daughter of Mexican immigrants would pose obstacles for me. I grew exasperated trying to explain myself to her. How could I prove a lifetime of challenges based on both my race and gender?” If we claim to care about hardships women face, we can’t sympathize with them only when it comes to issues related to gender, for she is far more than her gender. That is exactly the message feminists are trying to get across to society: we are more than our gender. So why can’t we acknowledge struggles beyond gender gaps? Would it be so difficult to hear stories from women who have struggled, yes, because they are women, but have faced further struggles still with poverty, discrimination, and violence? Sánchez continues: “The kinds of activism that ignore issues of race and class seek to protect and advance middle- and upper-class white women rather than promoting the well-being of all women.” If, in the support of one gender being equal to another, we are supporting one race over another, have we really gotten anywhere at all?

As a feminist, I long for equality. I long for equal pay, equal opportunity, and equal say. This world I envision is not a world of equal white women, but a world of equal human beings, one where every voice can be heard not in spite of, but empowered by her or his gender, race, social standing, and age. Every experience in this beautiful world is different; therefore, we all have something unique to say. In a time and age of brightly-burning, widely-spreading feminism, instead of only hearing the single voice that Sánchez heard, that of a “very accomplished older white woman,” it would be all the more pleasing to hear an entire chorus of voices representing and celebrating together what it means to be human.

Source: america.aljazeera.com

A few weeks ago, on a cold, rainy day, I had a conversation in the Dining Commons that I can’t get out of my mind, though on the surface it was about scant more than the weather. As I sat down, rather damp from my venture through the storm, I griped, “I love the rain, but not when it’s this cold out. I guess you could say it’s a conditional sort of love,” to which my friend replied, “Then it’s not love.” I didn’t think much of this at the time, for I was on the soggy side of life, and it was rambunctious in the Dining Commons as it often is at noon, and ponderings of love don’t thrive well in soggy, rambunctious environments. But later, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how many aspects of life I, as well as others, place conditions on. We set standards for our love, as if some deserve it and some don’t, and we place ourselves as the judge behind the desk with the wooden gavel held tightly in our hand. We treat our love as something expendable, something we may one day run out of, and we hoard it so as not to be wasteful.

Blogger Micah J. Murray touches on a similar issue in his post “Why I Can’t Say Love the Sinner/Hate the Sin Anymore.” He discusses how this commonly-used phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin” is more harmful than one initially realizes, for it places labels on others instead of on self, thus creating an hierarchy of the one actively “loving” the sinner, and the one being labeled “sinner.” It casts the one saying the phrase as “lover,” completely ignoring their status as a sinner, and the one being loved as “sinner.” Murray writes that he can’t stand when certain groups, particularly the LGBTQ community, are referred to as “them” and welcomed into the church with condescendingly open, “loving” arms, as they are loved as marred “sinners” and not as brothers and sisters.

Murray emphasizes in his post, “They say Jesus was a friend of sinners, but he didn’t describe himself that way.” This is important. Jesus didn’t preach about loving “them”; he lived a life of loving all. He didn’t sit at a table with the tax collectors and tell them that they were thieves but that he loved them anyway, in spite of his hatred for their sins. In fact, in Luke 19:9-10, Jesus sat at Zacchaeus’ table and said, “‘Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost’” (NIV). Every time we stand on our soapbox and say, “I’m loving the sinner, but hating the sin,” we are, intentionally or not, failing to include ourselves in the group of “sinners.” We are failing to include the “this man, too” part of what Jesus said. Like Murray writes, we can throw in as many disclaimers as we so desire, claiming that “all sinners are welcome here,” but saying that doesn’t make the reality of our exclusive labeling any less afflictive. If we as a church boldly proclaim a lifestyle of a love restlessly writhing to love like Jesus loved, we cannot set boundaries, conditions or standards on said love. Whether we look our brother or sister in the eye and see sin, we must live by Luke 6:42 and acknowledge that the Church is full of sinners with planks skewing how they see the specks of sin in others’ eyes. (“How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye’” [NIV].)

I believe that as one family living under, for and in speculation of Christ, we are called to love. Love through differences, through disagreements, through heartache, through overflowing joy. Love when your brother or sister is hurt, love even when you feel you can’t stand. Love when you wake up before the sun for a duty-filled day, and love when the stress is almost too much to handle. 1 John 4:8 reads, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (ESV). How does this reflect on the church that will not love its gay brother or sister? “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is not love; it is condescension. Of course we have theological differences. Is homosexuality a sin? Is it dependent on the culture? Should the Bible be taken literally, or do its meanings change in different contexts?

I don’t know. You don’t know. I have opinions of my own, but they’re just that–they’re my own. Every mind in the world has different opinions. Though frustrating to the point of rage at times, this reality–this difference–is quite beautiful. No two people have the same opinion on every issue, so while discussing opinions is essential and more valuable than words are able to elucidate, opinions will remain opinions. We can try our very hardest with no avail to draw others’ opinions to look more like ours, or we can acknowledge the truth that we all crave to be loved, and start from there.

It is not our role as a brother or sister in Christ to judge. We are to hold each other accountable, and we are to walk alongside each other in times of tribulation, but as James 4:12 reads, “There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” (ESV). Murray writes in his post about the woman caught in adultery and dragged to Jesus’ feet: “She was defined by a moment.” If we were all defined by our lowest moment, or even by a moment we were less than proud of, not one head would resist slack to falling in shame.

Why do we believe that love must be bound to conditions? For the same reason I defiled the word “love” by smothering it with requirements on that rainy day: sometimes we forget that love is more potent than affection, more abundant than eternity and more vital than life itself, because sometimes we forget that love is what held our best friend to the Cross. And sometimes, amidst our forgetfulness, our love fails to resemble love at all anymore.