UNITED STATES
Aljazeera
Rose Aguilar
San Francisco, CA – Forget child abuse. The Catholic Bishops would rather spend their time, money, and resources on birth control and women’s sex lives. The main debate over the past few weeks in the United States has been about birth control. And guess who’s dominating it? The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the country’s official organisation of the Catholic hierarchy.
The bishops are up in arms over the Obama administration’s rule that would have required health insurance plans, including Catholic-affiliated hospitals and universities, to offer free contraception. Once the bishops took to the airwaves to criticise the decision, the administration modified its policy so that insurance companies, not Catholic hospitals or universities, pay for contraception. But that didn’t appease the bishops – or Republican extremists.
On February 16, House Republicans thought it was necessary, with all the economic problems the US is facing, to hold a hearing on the contraception rule. The panel was comprised of five men – five religious men who without any kind of health background (watch this video, towards the end).
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