Helping Women = Denying Religious Rights
by Zephyr on Jan.14, 2009, under Politics, Religion
I’m home sick today with a nasty little cold, and I found this little tidbit this morning while glancing through my RSS feeds. The title is simply:
ACLU Seeks To Prohibit Free Exercise Of Religion
Sounds like a well-balanced article from the get-go, doesn’t it? Granted, it’s from a “family” newspaper in Philadelphia, but it’s still a great example of crap journalism. This guy should seriously find another career.
The first 1/4 of the article is dedicated to the ACLU’s side of the case, ignoring much of the important parts and focusing only on what they consider to be infractions on the freedom of religion.
It starts out by really giving everyone part of the picture:
The complaint (ACLU of Massachusetts v. Leavitt) was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. It states that since 2006 HHS has allowed the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to limit, based on its religious beliefs, the types of services trafficking victims receive with taxpayer dollars.
The ACLU claims that since April 2006, HHS, which administers funds allocated by the federal TVPA, has awarded the USCCB grants ranging from $2.5 to $3.5 million annually to support organizations that provide direct services to trafficking victims. As part of its sub-granting program, USCCB prohibits, based on its religious beliefs, grantees from using federal funds to provide or refer for contraceptive or abortion services.
This sounds a little weird without context. What’s missing here is why it’s important for the people the TVPA helps to get contraceptives and access to abortion services. Without that nugget of information, you might wonder why trafficking victims would want such a thing. Yet, this shoddy article doesn’t answer that question. Instead, it dives immediately into victim mode.
“What they are doing has more to do with prohibiting the free exercise of religion than it does with the establishment of religion. They are forcing the Church to go against its religious beliefs,” said Father Michael Orsi, professor of law and religion at Ave Maria University Law School, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Fr. Orsi said a double standard exists. He points out that the ACLU opposed the Solomon Act — which says law schools will lose their federal funding if they ban military recruiting on campus — because of the First Amendment. But they want to force religious organizations to abandon their beliefs to comply with the First Amendment.
Worse, they would rather see the problem continue than have the USCCB involved as it is now.
Right, okay, so… denying services to women in need based on fairy tales is the same as allowing military recruiters on college campuses? That’s right… only poor people who can’t afford to go to college should be recruited to. Oh, and the ACLU apparently would rather have human trafficking to continue than let the Catholics do it by imposing their beliefs on those they help. What?
The article then goes on to tout how many people have been helped by the Catholics under this program, then goes on to infer that the ACLU thinks helping people is an inappropriation of funds. Huh? Here’s a part that was completely looked over:
ORR maintains a contract with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to provide this assistance. The report states, “Through this contract, ORR has streamlined support services to help victims gain access to shelter, job training, and health care, and provided a mechanism for victims to receive vital emergency services prior to receiving certification.”
Catch the part that I did? Vital emergency services. Access to contraception, emergency contraception and abortion counseling are not vital emergency services. If you’ve just escaped sex trafficking and are pregnant with the child of your tormentors, you’re, no pun intended, screwed. That just isn’t vital… and making these services available is a “non sequitor”.
But Fr. Orsi says the ACLU’s case is weak. He sees it as a “non sequitur.”
He said he believes the Catholic Church is helping these victims to live good quality lives by helping to free themselves from their enslavement. The ACLU’s position that it must provide birth control and abortion counseling is irrelevant.
“What is the correlation between providing abortion information and escaping from the slavery of sex trafficking,” he said. “They are conflating the two issues of the sex trafficking industry with abortion.”
Perhaps the celibacy vow has confused Fr. Orsi on just what happens to women when they get used for sex trafficking.
After reading this joke of an article, I went poking around in search of some sort of voice of reason that could let me know just what sort of horrors these women face. It took a lot of looking to find an article that didn’t gloss over why this is important.
Carol Gomez, the founding director of MataHari, a Boston-based non-profit that provides services to trafficking victims but does not contract with the bishops’ conference, said victims often experience physical and emotional trauma, have a high risk of pregnancy and can be exposed to sexually transmitted diseases.
“Part of the healing process … is returning power back to the victim, and this means for the person to have full rights over determining his or her medical care issues and his or her reproductive health issues,” Gomez said.
So what we’re doing is making people victims twice over. First, you get rescued from a horrible situation where you’re used as a sex slave. Then, you find out you’re not allowed to use emergency contraception or abortion to remove the child your captors created in you with which to control you. On top of that, you can’t even get condoms to help prevent you from getting or spreading sexually-transmitted diseases that you didn’t ask for.
For this, the Catholics deserve a pat on the back for helping about 600 people? Nope, they should have never gotten any of the money. I’d like a refund on my taxes, please.
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