An Analysis of "Contraception, Women's Health, and Equal Citizenship: The Missing Horn of the Dilemma." By David E. DeCosse
This article, by David E. DeCosse, offered viewpoints on the relationship between Catholicism and contraception. DeCosse advocates for a change in the Catholic rhetoric against birth control, and explains why the HSS and Catholic Church have opposing viewpoints. The HSS recently required Catholic workplace institutions to provide birth control for employees, which the Church tried to evade unsuccessfully. The church has been pretty confused about contraception, public health, and social justice, as portrayed by DeCosse. DeCosse argues that the Catholic church needs to reform its ideas on birth control, and that this is a very big “horn of the dilemma” that the church has yet to tackle. The HSS, the Federal Health and Human Services regulation, demanded that employees of Catholic institutions be able to acquire free birth control through their employer’s insurance plan. Catholic Bishops considered this a direct case of the government attacking the Church’s religious freedom, but many Catholics disagree with the Bishop’s standpoint, creating a fission. Though Catholic Bishops “care a tremendous amount about women’s health,” DeCosse states that they could never understand what it would be like to be a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy. DeCosse acknowledges that Catholicism, at its root, considers any form of contraception “intrinsic evil,” and that that standpoint is counterproductive towards basic public health for women.
David DeCosse wrote this editorial in 2012 at Santa Clara University after a recent uproar within the Catholic Church between the mandatory provision of birth control by Catholic workplaces to employees that request it and the basic Catholic anti-contraceptive standpoint. DeCosse states that the Catholic Church’s Bishops “acknowledge” the patriarchy, but ignore it when debating the intrinsic public health necessity of contraception. His purpose seems to be advocating for the Catholic church to finally address the “horn” of birth control as a global issue, and to not push the issue aside as an evil of the Church. DeCosse’s audience consists of scholars interested in Catholicism and public health, as well as Catholic Bishops who are ruthlessly ignoring birth control.
The author, David E. DeCosse, is an affiliate at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the same university, and directs the Campus Ethics Program. With all of these credentials, it can be inferred that DeCosse knows quite a bit about Catholicism, it’s history, and it’s social standings, and lack thereof, on certain topics. DeCosse recognizes that the Catholic Church has grasped “one horn” of the dilemma, their definition of religious freedom. However, with this grasping, he states that the Church has yet to grasp the necessity for contraception as an issue of religious freedom within Catholicism. I think he is a reliable source, as he poses to both sides Catholic and Bishop for the argument, and has pulled information from many sources to present these sides. His ability to talk about the Church critically, while showing his affiliation for the Church, proves his reliability.
DeCosse, almost off the bat, states “Catholic[s] thought that religious freedom… the ‘first freedom,’” and that this base “[prioritizes] religious freedom over any other competing values” within the Church. With this established, DeCosse recognizes that the Church is blatantly ignoring to tackle the “bulk of the dilemma” regarding women’s public health. Though he is critical of the Church’s counterproductive ignorance to birth control thus far, he is an active participant in the Church, and is involved with it at Santa Clara University. Though he has a critical eye of the Church, he also says “Catholic bishops care a tremendous amount about women's health,” which he himself proved as incorrect because of the Church’s ignorance towards women’s public health until they had to acknowledge it because of the HSS. I do not understand why DeCosse states that the Church truly cares about women’s health in the same paper in which he criticizes the church for “[choosing] to ignore the public health dilemma of women’s health.” Is this editorial reliable? Sort of, if the reader is looking to read a work supporting two counteractive statements. It is reliable for Church members, probably, to read the opposite statements because they obviously have to be forcibly spoon-fed birth control provision after being reminded that they already have cared about women’s health.
It seems, however, as if spoon-feeding that the Church already cares about women’s health is the only way to make them notice how they need to be accepting of birth control. DeCosse knows that women “bear an undue burden of seeing through their pregnancy compared to their male counterparts,” and he states that “to ensure for women their status as equal citizens,” women require the secular bodily choice for birth control. DeCosse knows that the church is problematic in ignoring this public health issue, which is probably why he sweet-talked his Catholic or Catholic Bishop audience by telling them that they have previously cared about women’s health. Non-Catholics probably already knew about the Church’s blatant malevolence towards women’s health, which is why his audience of the Church itself is obvious in his spoon-feeding. This piece ties in the intrinsic Catholic value of religious freedom in support of the provision of birth control, thereby supporting that Catholics change their ideology against contraception. Not only does he support the change in thought, but he uses this rhetoric to call those in leadership within the Catholic community hypocritical if they continue to ignore contraception. DeCosse uses his established authority and respect within Catholicism to critique the way things have been to most effectively bring about positive reform.
