My Take: Contraception politics makes good works difficult

Editor’s note: The writer was granted anonymity because of concerns this piece could jeopardize her employment.
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My work brings attention to people who don’t have corporate lobbyists representing them in government. I advocate for people too often talked at or about, not to, and never with, by the elite and powerful.

But I’ve come to realize that women are excluded from the Catholic notion of social justice, specifically the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ understanding of social justice.

The bishops don’t understand women or biology. They understand power and control. They have become lobbyists in robes exerting influence in Washington and every state capital.

They are detached from the real life challenges facing women who sit faithfully in their pews, serving their churches, and millions like me who’ve rejected their power and control in order to keep the most important parts of our faith.

The politically powerful bishops want to control access to contraception, portraying themselves as victims of the new federal healthcare law’s policy that provides free birth control coverage to women.

My work brings me in touch with people for whom the word “victim” has real meaning. The bishops aren’t victims. They’ve created a political charade based on invented threats to religious liberty.

What about my religious liberty and that of my co-workers? Real religious liberty gives everyone the right to make personal decisions, including whether to use birth control, based on our own beliefs.
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In rejecting the Obama administration’s compromise on contraception coverage – which mandates that insurance companies, not religiously affiliated employers, provide free contraception coverage – the church and the bishops find themselves out on a limb politically.

They have twisted religious liberty to mean they can impose their beliefs on others, and it’s taking a toll. The bishops’ rigid thinking caused me to leave the Catholic Church two years ago.

I could do the church’s good works advocating for others, but the only way I could advocate for myself was to leave the church.

I was no longer nourished spiritually. Instead, the spoken and unspoken messages about sexuality, the body and women – especially our inability to serve as clergy – forced me to leave.