Catholicism, Contraception, and Misogyny
Kathryn Joyce writes in The Revealer about pharmacist Neil Noesen in Wisconsin who, when faced with a prescription for birth control pills, asked if they were for contraception. When told "yes" he refused to fill the prescription. He also refused either to tell her that she could come back later to have it filled or to transfer the prescription to another pharmacy.
In less objective realms, some conservative Catholics laud Noesen’s refusal as a brave act of individual conscience and a protected right of religious freedom. Pinko feminist (or "misanthropic know-nothing") me characterized it as the attempt of a man who will never become pregnant to enforce his version of morality at the expense of an adult woman’s legal rights; that Noesen not only refused to personally fill it, but also refused to transfer it, or even inform Phiede of the other avenues open to her that night, I considered not just as the concern for his soul he cites in his defense, but also an attempt to hinder Phiede’s obtaining the drug under any circumstances. That attempt to control an adult woman’s options I called misogyny. I believe it even more now, after hearing what Noesen's defenders have to say.
After Mark Shea posted a scolding critique to our Noesen item (Shea: “Because, of course, there is only one pharmacist in Madison, Wisconsin and if his conscience forbids him to fill somebody's birth control prescription then she will simply have to go through life barefoot and pregnant.”), one of his readers asked why I hadn’t told “the chick to keep her legs shut.” Another commenter, apparently one unfamiliar with how birth control pills work, wrote that, “it’s not pregnancy [Phiede would] be facing, but at most the emotional pain of one Saturday night without copulation.” A more civil discussion with Bill Cork at Ut Unum Sint, regarding the question of what women were to do when their only regional options were pharmacists who wouldn’t fill birth control prescriptions at “Catholic” health care institutions, prompted him to say that “There are other forms of birth control they can learn.”
The House passed its own “conscience clause” last month, prohibiting local, state or federal authorities from requiring any institution or health care professional to provide abortions, pay for them, or make abortion related referrals. Under the re-definition of abortion promoted by Noesen and the similarly minded “Pharmacists for Life,” it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suspect that birth control could fall into this category after a court case or two. Maybe not a big deal for those of us living in urban areas, but a considerable – and unequal – burden to place upon women living in regions with fewer options for health care, such as the 100 counties in the country where Catholic hospitals are the sole providers. But they’ll just have to learn another method of birth control. Or deal with “the emotional pain of one Saturday night without copulation.” Or learn to keep their legs closed.
The man who wrote this last comment also chastised me for a lack of integrity in framing my argument. I should have, he said, compared the “spiritual pain” Noesen claimed not with the woman’s hypothetical resultant pregnancy (implication: girls who take birth control will never have children), but with the lack of pain she’d have had with her hypothetical resultant abortion (implication: girls who take birth control experience no pain or difficulty, moral or otherwise, when faced with making a choice about abortion). Therefore, one can assume, their concerns can be easily dismissed as the whining amoral sluts who deserve no voice in the debate.
The San Francisco Chronicle quotes Noesen on his reasoning:
"I could have trouble sleeping at night. I could be suffering the worst kind of pain. Spiritual pain," Noesen told an administrative law judge. ... "It's good for a person to be persecuted," he said when asked by his lawyer how the proceedings have affected him. "Really, it helps you grow in your faith."
Noesen said the police presence was upsetting. "They were trying to scare me," Noesen said. "They had no business there. It certainly wasn't a police matter. ...This is something you might see in Colombia or some other Third World country. For a free country, it is really an embarrassment. They asked for my address and said they were filing a report." Noesen argued that forwarding the prescription to another pharmacist would also be untenable: "It would be a sin to induce another to sin. Whether they participated or not, I would be participating in the bucket brigade."
According to the Duluth Superior:
[T]he former head of the state Pharmacy Internship Board, Paul Rosowski, testified that, while the American Pharmacists Association recognizes a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense medications because of moral or religious beliefs, they also have an obligation to give patients another way to get the medicine. ...The prescription, as Rosowski noted, doesn't belong to the pharmacist - it belongs to the patient. Pharmacists, whatever their religion, have no right to interfere with that, which is what Noesen did in this case. Moreover, when a pharmacist's religious views prevent him or her from doing their work, they have, at minimum a professional duty to direct patients to other sources.
Joyce's point about dismissing the concerns of women seeking contraception is very important. I see the same attitude in this site's forum where the one person who tries to defend the pharmacist only seems able to do so by insisting that the woman was not in any way harmed and, therefore, the pharmacist was perfectly within his rights to ignore his legal and professional obligations.
It's a problem that often crops up in these conflicts: if a person has a religious reason for inconveniencing others, interfering with others' lives, or causing problems for others, that's OK. Everyone else should just deal with it. It's not "real harm," which only seems to exist when there is physical injury (maybe) or religion involved. It's a bias on behalf of religion that unjustified and unjustifiable.
People generally shouldn't be forced to violate their consciences, whether religiously grounded or not. However, that doesn't mean that people can use their moral conscience to ignore civil laws whenever they choose — and that includes cases where a person isn't directly and physically injured. Some laws exist to create uniform standards and support the principle of equal protection, meaning that everyone everywhere can expect to receive equal, fair treatment. No one specific violation might be enough to create an easily identifiable harm, but widespread violations (and exceptions) would. This includes situations such as professional ethics codes like the one Noesen was bound by but ignored.
I think that Joyce is making an important observation by labeling Noesen a misogynist. He put his religious beliefs above the physical, emotional, and psychological well-being of another person when he had neither the right nor the authority to do so. He may not believe that contraception is moral, but he doesn't have the authority to make such decisions for other people. The attitudes of his defenders quoted above make it clear that they don't regard the right of women to obtain contraception to be important; indeed, they regard women who use it as morally inferior to Noesen. As for Noesen, he clearly regarded the woman's legal and moral interests in obtaining contraception inferior to his religious interests.
This, then, is the consequence of people dismissing the harm caused by Noesen as irrelevant or nonexistent (even for those who don't personally believe that contraception is immoral). Trivializing the consequences to others effectively trivializes the interests of others. In saying that the effects of failing to obtain birth control aren't important, one is also saying that the woman's interest in obtaining birth control isn't important — or, at the very least, isn't as important as the interests of Noesen to ensure that she doesn't get birth control.
In cases like this the interests being trivialized will almost universally be the interests of women — the interests of specific women seeking contraception and the interest of women generally to have access to contraception. Insisting that the religious beliefs of people like Noesen justify their ignoring legal and ethical obligations adhered to by everyone else simply because the interests of the women affected are trivial, less important, or nonexistent strikes me as rather misogynistic in nature. This would be further underscored if one were to insist that dismissing or trivializing the interests of women is to put those interests "in their proper perspective." That sounds disturbing like putting women "in their proper place." Coincidence?
In a civil, secular society where church and state are separated, no one's religious interests should be placed above the interests (secular or religious) of another. The woman seeking her prescription had just as much legal, moral, and social right to her interests being respected as Noesen's did to his. Just as much. His interests don't suddenly become superior (especially as far as the law is concerned) because they are religious or because he thinks that any manner of helping her would be a "sin."
Had Noesen fulfilled his professional duty to ensure that her interests were respected, but by someone else, then the situation would have been fine. But he didn't do that. Instead, he placed his interests above hers and took deliberate steps to prevent her from having her prescription filled by anyone. There is a significant difference between passively refusing to participate in some activity and preventing (even through passive inaction) someone else from participating in that activity. Noesen crossed the line form the former to the latter and that was where he crossed the line from a taking a morally principled stand to abusing his power and acting like a bully.
Perhaps Noesen felt that he had a higher ethical obligation, one that required him to deprive others of the ability to make personal choices and pursue their interests. If so, then fine — he's not the first and he won't be the last. I won't question his sincerity because his sincerity isn't relevant. Just because a person is sincere in their beliefs does not mean that they should be permitted to hold a position of power and authority that allows them to put their beliefs over and above the interests of others.
Noesen should not escape the consequences of his actions and continue to be able to abuse his position again in the future by depriving others of medications they want and their doctors prescribe but which he objects to. He should, quite simply, lose his license to be a pharmacist. He doesn't deserve that kind of public trust or medical power. Freedom of religion in America doesn't entitle one to have the power or authority to impose that religion on others.
A pharmacist's right to follow his conscience in not filling a prescription for contraceptives must end at the point where a woman is prevented from obtaining her contraception. This is the metaphorical equivalent of one's right to swing their fist ending at the point where their fist meets my nose (though in reality that right ends a bit sooner). Why? Because a woman's right to and interest in obtaining contraception are not trivial and not irrelevant. They are every bit as important, both in particular cases and in the general sense, as is my right to an intact nose.
If people can shed the latent misogyny that tends to be the cause of trivializing women's interests in controlling or expressing their sexuality, they might begin to understand this. Access to and use of contraception have been legal for decades now and contraceptive pills are one of the most widely prescribed medications in America — but cases like this make it clear that we still haven't gotten used to this, still don't understand why it's important, and continue to disregard its importance.
Addendum: I should point out that access to contraception is matter of human rights, not simply women's rights. Women are most immediately impacted by access to or denial of contraceptives, but regardless of the form taken, contraception is something that both men and women are involved with. Because of this, and because of its obvious role in family planning, access to contraception must be regarded as fundamental to the right of humans' ability to control, regulate, and make decisions about the reproductive process.
Those who would deny other's access to contraception, insisting that sexual activity not be permitted without the possibility of pregnancy, child birth, and child rearing, are acting to inhibit a basic human right. They may be doing so out of what they regard as higher ideals, but who has not engaged in discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, or the restriction of human rights out of what they regarded as higher ideals and ethical principles? None, that I am aware of. All evil is done in the name of some higher good, even the most egregious examples of evil like the Holocaust. Thus, the mere fact that opponents of contraception are acting out of what they believe to be higher ethical principles does not justify their actions or give them license to have those principles imposed on others.
There are many people who believe that the human reproductive process should remain in God's hands and that humans should not have the right to use "artificial" means to regulate or control it. They have a right to believe this. They also have a right to employ this principle in their own reproductive lives. They do not, however, have the right to act in a manner that prevents others from regulating or controlling their reproduction — even if their actions are religiously motivated.
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