Beauty, Joy and the Healthcare Debate

There are members of our current government who want to define for all women the meaning of real beauty and joy. They do not speak for all women. Many, many women speak about a beauty and a joy that come from deeply held beliefs. We have the freedom to believe them because it is a basic human right.

Real love in marriage between a man and a woman involves being honest. This honesty brings beauty and joy! Believing in living out faithfulness to the vows we promised includes a commitment to complete and total body/soul unity.

The government does not speak for all women and the definition of real beauty and joy when it suggests imposing acceptance and payment of contraception for all. Contraception speaks against the unity. It contradicts real marital love. Are we no longer allowed to speak that we already have a 100% safe and reliable way to postpone pregnancy instead of rendering our love sterile? Are we no longer allowed to speak that real love involves a beautiful and total gift of self to the other, not withholding any part of ourselves? Are we no longer allowed to speak that children are a great joy and not a burden? Are we no longer allowed to disagree with defining fertility is a disease that needs a pill to correct it? Calling contraception and abortion “healthcare” is a twisted redefinition that does not speak for women who consider their fertility a blessing not a disease.

Interestingly, this is not just a “Catholic issue”, as the media likes to report. Every Christian church was unanimous in its condemnation of contraception as harmful to marriage and to society until 1930. Catholics, Protestants, and secular writers all predicted what many, many people still believe today – that widespread use of contraception would have far reaching negative consequences contrary to human dignity, marriage and the family. For example, Theodore Roosevelt said in his December 3rd State of the Union Address in 1906, “Birth control is the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement.” In a book I am reading called Theology and Sanity, author Frank Sheed sheds light by calling it “at-one–ment”. It is about the unity! Let’s be honest. Do most of us see a true renewal and rebuilding of family and society happening around us?

How wrong it is for the government to “misspeak” for so many women with a mandate that would place utterly distasteful words on our mouths….. that asks us to put our money where our mouth isn’t?