Why the Hobby Lobby Decision is Good for Women (Part 2)

Almost immediately after the Hobby Lobby decision, there was a huge uproar. People were dismayed to find that corporations could deny women the fundamental right to healthcare. How could a corporation impose its beliefs on women in a way that affected their health?

By some of the tweets and the comments, you would think that Hobby Lobby had declared that they do not believe women should have access to health care at all. But this is not the case. Hobby Lobby, and corporations like it, object to the HHS mandate, the mandate that ensures coverage of contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs and devices. It is worth noting that many of the organization objecting to the mandate already cover contraception when it is being used for non-contraceptive reasons.

But here is the problem. When did all of women’s health become dependent on access to birth control? By giving into that definition, aren’t we letting ourselves be defined solely by our reproductive capacities?

Then there is the fact that “women’s health” professionals, gynecologists, have become lazy diagnosticians. If a woman walks into a gynecologist’s office, no matter what the issue, she will be offered a prescription for birth control. I saw three different ob-gyns about gynecological issues. None of them really listened to me, but were very eager to get me on birth control. When I asked why I was being prescribed this, none of them really had an answer. They did not know what was wrong with me. But they figured, whatever it was, the pill would fix it.

Except, the pill doesn’t really fix anything.  All it does is coveriup the symptoms of an underlying condition. Fortunately for me, I was able to see a Napro ob-gyn who diagnosed me with endometriosis. [Learn more about Naprotechnology here]. I was able to have surgery to remove the endometriosis, and hopefully, preserve my fertility. None of the other doctors I had seen considered that I might have endometriosis. Actually, when I had raised the concern to one doctor, he told me it was not possible for me to have it.

When did women’s health advocates become so lazy? When did doctors stop caring about diagnosing a patient’s problems and just started covering them up? Shouldn’t women’s health be about actually understanding a woman’s body and what is going on inside of her, rather than just tossing her a “band-aid” pill with tons of side effects, that just allows the problem inside to fester?

There is a better way. As I stated above, I found a doctor who specialized in NaPro technology. NaPro technology is a women's health science that monitors and maintains a woman's reproductive and gynecological health. It provides medical and surgical treatments that cooperate completely with the reproductive system. Instead of rejecting a woman’s fertility, this system cherishes it and does all that is possible to preserve it. The doctors I have found who practice this system actually listened to my concerns and responded to them, instead of just throwing a generic medicine at me and hoping it would make me feel better.

We need to be promoting real women’s health. Women’s health that understand women as whole persons. Women’s health that is not boiled down to whether or not a business pays for a woman to suppress her fertility. Fertility is not a disease and it should not be treated as such.  We need to promote women’s health  that does not see the way a women’s body normally functions as in need of fixing. We need health care professional who listen to our concerns and respect our beliefs. That is true care for women's health.

Why the Hobby Lobby Decision is Good for Women (Part 1)

If you were down at the Supreme Court yesterday awaiting the Hobby Lobby decision, you might have noticed something interesting. The overwhelming majority of Hobby Lobby supporters were women.

Huh.

I thought Hobby Lobby was trying to oppress women.

They were trying to ban birth control.

They were trying to bring us back to the 1950s.

They were enforcing a patriarchal society where men make all the decisions about women’s reproductive choices.

Oh, there's me, looking very oppressed by the decision

But, then, why were most of the Hobby Lobby supporters women? I mean, even the mainstream media had to use pictures of women celebrating the decision when it came out. 

However, if you wandered over the pro-choice side, you saw something interesting. At least half of the supporters were men. The person leading their chants was a man. At one point, before he started to lead a chant, he leaned over to the women in front of him and said “do you want to be referred to as women or girls?” I had more than one pro-choice man get two inches from my face and scream about access to birth control.

But please, do tell us how Hobby Lobby is trying to oppress women.

Oh look, the all-female legal team! 

Despite what the media, or Planned Parenthood may lead you to believe, this decision was a good decision for women.  Despite one’s personal beliefs on contraception, our First Amendment guarantees the right to exercise our religious beliefs. To claim that women care more about their employer paying for their birth control than our own religious freedom is demeaning to all women. Over a third of the plaintiffs who have filed suit against the HHS mandate are women. The mandate hurts women business owners who were being forced to choose between their religious convictions and their own business. Thankfully, the Supreme Court recognized that this was an unfair burden to place on business owners.

It is also problematic to refer the HHS mandate as a huge advancement for women’s equality, as supporters of the mandate often do. The subtext is that if a woman wants to be successful or equal in the workforce, she must suppress her fertility, which is viewed as a hindrance to her goals and her fulfillment. Women are sent the message –  that there is something wrong with their bodies that needs correcting if they are to be equal. To be equal to men, they must become like men.

This view is demeaning to women. We are being told that if we even want to have the opportunity to achieve equality, we should be contracepting. We are told that if we do become pregnant, whether planned or unplanned, somehow we are unsuccessful, in effect we have failed.  If we choose to pursue motherhood, we are clearly not pursuing success – at least not as the government defines it.

If the government truly saw the choices for and against motherhood as equal, there would be more support for women who become pregnant. Contraception and abortion-inducing drugs and devices are offered for free through the HHS mandate, but not all pregnancy-related costs are covered. By only offering full coverage of options promoting the prevention or interruption of pregnancy, the government is sending a subtle but clear message about what it means to be a woman and what a woman's success looks like – and it doesn’t include her fertility.

So who declared the real war on women?

Stay tuned for the next blog post, where we will discuss what true women's healthcare should look like.