<p>And I hope ND can win in this quest. However, it will not erase the honorary degree bestowed to Pres. Obama. Do you think that Pres. Obama suddenly changed his views in the last few months compared to commencement 2009? I doubt it.</p>
<p>I am confused how anyone thinks it will scare away potential students. ND hasn’t ever provided birth control for their students. How exactly does maintaining their consistent position “scare away” potential students? </p>
<p>If a potential student applies to ND and doesn’t know birth control is/was not provided, then ND probably wasn’t the best fit anyway.</p>
<p>I think that the original conjecture was that Notre Dame’s participation in the lawsuits against the mandate would make it look more overtly political, that the university’s seeming more political (and perhaps also partisan) would depress applications.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I think there will be much effect, though. As has been said already, the pool of applicants to Notre Dame who don’t know much about Notre Dame and what it stands for culturally, religiously and politically is, I think, pretty darn small. (Perhaps also athletically gifted?) I’d expect that, like most political decisions enacted in the last decade, it will simply reinforce people’s previously held notions. People who have admired Notre Dame will be more inclined to apply, and to attend if admitted. People who have felt antipathy toward Notre Dame will…I don’t know…not apply more zealously.</p>
<p>I mean, way back on page 1 I said that I do think this move by Notre Dame and the other Catholic organizations looks politically motivated to me. I just don’t think anybody’s going to move to the other side of the fence over it.</p>
<p>Anyone who would base her college application decision on the availability of “free” birth control probably belongs at a less-selective university.</p>
<p>I don’t necessarily agree with that.</p>
<p>“Free” birth control can be a proxy for a lot of things, including a belief that the use of contraception is morally neutral, a belief that readily available birth control is better than a high rate of unplanned or unwanted pregnancy, and a belief that one’s private decisions about such an intimate matter should be allowed to be made privately and without unsought influence of any institution.</p>
<p>I can see a lot of philosophical reasons why a person might choose not to attend a university that would not make free or low-cost contraception available to students. You may not be in sympathy with these reasons, but that doesn’t make them stupid.</p>
<p>
It is worth noting that ND is not the only institution affected, and thus there may be many who had previously not had such a policy.</p>
<p>The government tried to come up with a compromise; basically, they were just going to make insurance companies include it “for no additional cost” (whether you believe that’s possible or not) in all plans, so the plan holders wouldn’t have to make the decision against their religion. Father Jenkins found it insufficient; does anyone think it was an improvement?</p>
<p>The administration recently refused, despite much student and faculty prodding, to make it a policy that you couldn’t discriminate against a student based upon sexual orientation. I was hoping that the decision would receive a lot of scrutiny, but I predict the lawsuit will greatly overshadow any attention that denial might have received.</p>
<p>@ Gobluu-</p>
<p>First, a point of semantics, technically oral contraceptives are NOT abortifacients, as by definition, the term applies to the termination of a pregnancy, which can only occur after said pregnancy has begun, i.e. after implantation of the embryo in the endometrial lining. </p>
<p>However, there is some debate in the medical community as to what role exactly post-fertilization effects play in the function of oral contraceptives. As a medical student, I have studied this both in class and on my own by looking into the literature for some additional detail and clarification. I have also discussed this at length with my friend who is in pharmacy school since she has obviously had more pharmacology than I have. Basically what I’ve found is this:</p>
<p>OCPs are super effective at preventing ovulation, and, barring that, also play a role in preventing fertilization if ovulation does occur. But, if these fail, the effects of the pill on the endometrial lining may reduce the likelihood that a zygote will implant (via decreased endometrial thickness and changes in expressed integrins), leading to the general consensus that this may sometimes play a role in the mechanism of action of these drugs (your point). Many women also do not take the medication correctly and skip days or take the pill at different times (also in your video), which in theory would raise this percentage. However, in that case, it is not really fair to blame the medication itself for user error. Also, the quality of the data on how often post-fertilization non-implantation occurs in women taking oral contraceptives (as prescribed or non-compliantly) is not the best, partly because the pills are typically very effective at preventing fertilization from occurring (therefore the study must be very large) and also because it is difficult to detect the presence of a zygote before it has implanted. Also, a good study would have to compare the rate of post-fertilization non-implantation in women taking hormonal contraceptives to that of women who are not on them. Based on data we do have, this rate may be anywhere from 33-80%. As an aside, to me, this is an astounding number if you work from the assumption that life begins at the moment of fertilization. Especially considering it does not include the percentage of pregnancies that result in a miscarriage or stillbirth. Working from these numbers (or any others I have found), well over half of the people to have ever lived have died before they were born.</p>
<p>This all certainly makes me question a few things, but the current data on birth control pills and the research on the physiology of pregnancy initiation has yet to convince me that OCPs are causing any more death than natural processes in the real world even if it is theoretically possible that they are. We don’t actually know for sure. And if they are, this number may be small enough that it may be offset by the number of lives saved by OCPs in the form of reduced rates of death from ovarian cancer or prevention of maternal complications. Does this mean we’re playing God? Sort of. But we do that every day when we administer drugs that help the vast majority of people but may cause death or complications from side effects in a minority. Or when we offer a heart transplant to one patient and turn down another. In analyzing a treatment, researchers come up with as much information as they can and come up with statistics like “number needed to treat” or “number needed to harm” to determine the costs/benefits of administering the treatment at a population level. In all of these cases, the intention and expectation is that you will help the patient not harm them or anyone else, though unintended and undesired side effects often occur. It gets into complicated ethical and philosophical territory. Very few things in medicine or life are black and white and we often don’t have all the information.</p>
<p>All anyone can do is do the best they can with all the information they have access to. Many people may come to different conclusions based on the very same information or have other reasons to oppose birth control. That’s why I believe any institution, company, or medical practitioner should be able to refuse to provide any non medically necessary medical intervention if they oppose it on medical or moral grounds.</p>
<p>I apologize for the tangent, but I am studying for my boards and you hit a nerve.</p>
<p>Shellzie - I do appreciate your response and I wish you the best on your boards. See my earlier post on the two YouTube video links. In the second, Tim Staples explains that the definition of conception changed in the 1960s from a fertilized egg to implemention in the ovum. I mentioned that the church views birth control as immoral on several accounts but what seems clear to me is that women only know the pill prevents fertilization and not that there is a third mechanism that works to destroy human life. </p>
<p>For those interested, one great resource for Catholics and Christians alike is to read what the early church fathers wrote on this subject and much more. An excellent book series is Faith of the Early Fathers by Jurgens. Also below is an excellent link on birth control from scripturalcatholic.com. Good bless.</p>
<p>[Scripture</a> Catholic - CONTRACEPTION](<a href=“http://www.scripturecatholic.com/contraception.html]Scripture”>CONTRACEPTION - Scripture Catholic)</p>
<p>“You may not be in sympathy with these reasons, but that doesn’t make them stupid.”</p>
<p>But they are, objectively, stupid. If Notre Dame were forced to comply with the contraception mandate, NONE of the other facets of the University’s Catholic identity would change. The only difference pre-and post-mandate would be that some students would be able to get “free” birth control pills, instead of paying perhaps $30-50 per month, tops, for same. That is an extremely silly and short-sighted basis for deciding where to apply to college. Hence, stupid.</p>
<p>“The government tried to come up with a compromise; basically, they were just going to make insurance companies include it “for no additional cost” (whether you believe that’s possible or not) in all plans, so the plan holders wouldn’t have to make the decision against their religion. Father Jenkins found it insufficient; does anyone think it was an improvement?”</p>
<p>Are you aware that most larger institutions, such as Notre Dame, are self-insured? Meaning that there is no third party insurance company on which to offload the costs. Not to mention that insurance companies are not in the business of giving away products and services for “free,” and that any additional costs created by the mandate will most certainly be borne by the employer and/or employee in the form of higher premiums.</p>
<p>OK, clairemarie, fine. If you want to be very narrow and literal about it, to rule out a university for no other reason than its refusal to distribute free birth control would be stupid. So stupid, in fact, that I don’t believe anybody is actually doing that, do you?</p>
<p>But that is not, in fact, what I said. I said that a person might see “free birth control” as a proxy for other issues–issues that are part of the culture at Notre Dame. I suggested that there might be a person for whom this issue provides the insight that she and Notre Dame are at odds philosophically. Furthermore, I said that it’s not necessarily stupid to be on the other side of these issues from Notre Dame. You seem to be gainsaying that. You seem to be saying that to disagree with Notre Dame is stupid. I hope I’m misinterpreting you.</p>
<p>I don’t like the sound of my last post.</p>
<p>I’m starting to get agitated and strident. I’m starting to blur the line between determining how Notre Dame behaves as a large employer (which I think is an issue where all citizens have a stake) and how Notre Dame defines its own religious and social culture (which is a matter in which a non-Catholic outsider like me should have little or no say).</p>
<p>I believe the original question was something like, “Will this law suit look explicitly partisan to outsiders, and will it affect applications and enrollment?” I came originally to give my outsider’s opinion: Notre Dame’s participation in the suit does look partisan to me, but I would be surprised if it had much impact on applications. As others have said, the overlap between Notre Dame applicants on one hand, and Obama- and mandate-backing family-planning advocates on the other, was already pretty minimal.</p>
<p>For a page and a half or so, I think there was a very respectful and well reasoned discussion of the birth-control mandate, and whether it unreasonably restrains Notre Dame’s free exercise of religion. I have tried to explain my position: while I don’t like the fact that the mandate requires something that many Catholics find objectionable, I think it’s allowable because in this instance, Catholics and a Catholic university are engaging in secular activities, so I support the mandate firmly, but with some misgivings. And I tried (back in the beginning, before I started falling apart on page 3) to listen to others’ arguments, and to concede that often those arguments had a lot of merit.</p>
<p>I’ve said what I came here to say. But I fear I am on the verge of overstepping–on the verge of saying how I think Notre Dame should think and act, when that’s not really my place. And I’m afraid I may wind up saying something that later I’ll be ashamed to own. So, clearly, it’s time for me to thank you all for a robust debate and then say good-bye, with apologies for any offense I may have given.</p>
<p>Thank you, and good-bye. I apologize if I offended; I did not mean to.</p>
<p>While it may not affect students’ decisions to apply and attend, it may well have an impact on faculty and senior staff deciding to accept positions or, if they are already on campus, to move on. Sure, most faculty and senior administrators can afford to pay out of pocket for services such as these. However, ND employs many hourly wage staff in the kitchens, in landscaping and maintenance who do not have that financial flexibility; this issue affects them directly. </p>
<p>The decision to focus on this issue, to the exclusion of broader issues of social justice, poverty, etc., seems to some to be an attempt to recover favor among the conservative Catholics lost after the Obama invitation several years ago. Ten years ago, one could identify the Father Ted’s vision of justice. Now, the vision of what it means to be a Catholic university has become increasingly narrow and rigid. Non-Catholic and even more liberal Catholic faculty who supported the mission of the school are less likely to feel they can in the coming years. Some may see that as “good riddance” but ND cannot be a top 20 academic institution if it only hires a certain type of Catholic faculty. </p>
<p>No one was surprised when the suit was filed the day after graduation when students had left and the student paper is no longer publishing articles.</p>
<p>A few things. First, the timing after graduation was to make sure graduation was focused on the graduates and not the law suit (given the Obama protest experience). Second, even my liberal/moderate friends at ND were happy over the suit. It’s not about whether women can use birth control, it’s over whether a religious organization can be forced to pay for said choice.</p>
<p>Second, ND is a very generous employer. No one besides student workers make anything near minimum wage. If you choose to purchase contraceptives which is well within your rights, Notre Dame is well within its rights to tell you to go pay for it. </p>
<p>Third Shelzie, the definition of life at implantation is not accepted by the church. My clinical mentor and some neonatologists I know laugh when someone makes the claim that Birth Control’s only action is by preventing ovulation. As the church sees life beginning at conception, it also sees BC as an abortifacient. Whether another party defines life as beginning at implantation is immaterial to the church’s view.</p>
<p>Furthermore, if you want to go the preventing ovarian cancer route, that is at least partly mitigated by the fact that increasing consumption of estrogen increases the risk of breast cancer.</p>
<p>“While it may not affect students’ decisions to apply and attend, it may well have an impact on faculty and senior staff deciding to accept positions or, if they are already on campus, to move on. Sure, most faculty and senior administrators can afford to pay out of pocket for services such as these. However, ND employs many hourly wage staff in the kitchens, in landscaping and maintenance who do not have that financial flexibility; this issue affects them directly.”</p>
<pre><code>And, again, any employee who bases her employment decisions on the issue whether she will have to incur a $25-50 monthly cost for contraceptive pills is irrational at best and an idiot at worst. Employees are ALREADY paying for their own contraceptives. Low-income employees who find the costs a burden have ample access to low-cost contraceptives at local family planning clinics. Faculty and higher-level staff – all of whom are earning well above minimum wage – can obviously afford to pay for their own contraceptives. If they insist that Someone Else should bear that burden, well, what can you say. There are plenty of reasons that prospective faculty and staff decide to take a job elsewhere and current employees decide to move on, but “I don’t want to pay for my own birth control pills” is unlikely to be one of them.
</code></pre>
<p>“The decision to focus on this issue, to the exclusion of broader issues of social justice, poverty, etc., seems to some to be an attempt to recover favor among the conservative Catholics lost after the Obama invitation several years ago. Ten years ago, one could identify the Father Ted’s vision of justice.”</p>
<p>Fifty years ago, Fr. Ted started taking Notre Dame down the slippery slope of secularization, diluting the Catholic mission of the school in an attempt to win favor among Notre Dame’s aspirational peers. In part, it worked. Secular and nominally Catholic faculty who formerly wouldn’t have been caught dead in a place like South Bend were increasingly willing to accept positions at a school with generous compensation and a politically acceptable focus on so-called “social justice” issues. But the tide has turned, and the University is determined to restore and strengthen its Catholic mission while also becoming a major research university. The focus on Catholic mission has attracted a number of prominent senior Catholic scholars from top schools around the country, who share Fr. Jenkins’ commitment to Notre Dame’s Catholic identity. A major part of this Catholic identity is connected with fidelity to Church teachings, including those on human sexuality and the sanctity of all human life. These teachings, too, are part of the “social justice” heritage of the Church. For while the Church leaves to human freedom many decisions regarding the elimination of poverty and violence, she insists that human life begins at conception, and that human sexuality must be ordered to marriage and procreation. Those who argue that questions of “social justice” must trump any focus on contraception, abortion, divorce, homosexuality, and the like are simply misinformed about the purpose of the Church, which is to save souls, and not to solve temporal problems.</p>
<p>@ Biodomer- </p>
<p>To clarify, I did NOT say that implantation is the defined beginning of LIFE, only that it is the defined beginning of PREGNANCY. The mother and child are separate entities, therefore “life” refers to the physiologic status of the child, whereas “pregnancy” refers to the physiologic status of the mother. Before implantation, a woman’s physiology remains in a non-pregnant state. The term abortion (and therefore, abortifacient) applies to termination (natural or induced) of pregnancy only. While confusion related to this distinction may sometimes complicate legal and ethical discussions, this clarification can sometimes be a hugely important distinction in medical research and patient care. The physiological changes of pregnancy often impact medical treatment like pharmacologic choices and dosing. Additionally, the medical management of a miscarriage (which may involve a D&E, misoprostal, or follow-up psych support) is significantly different from the medical management of a zygote not implanting (nothing, since no one knows it even happened). It is a medical, not a moral, distinction. And to change up the meaning of a word depending on the context only serves to add to the confusion. I was simply trying to define some terms to make sure everyone was on the same page.</p>
<p>I know what the Church teaches and I also believe that life begins at conception, but I am a little unsure as to how I feel about the effects of OCPs on reducing the rate of implantation. At this point, I am inclined to accept their use. It brings up a lot of issues about how we are to respond when the certainty of our data is in question and what role unintended results play in the moral classification of actions when our intentions are good (but we perhaps know that there may be a negative result). This issue plays into a lot more than this debate and sometimes the Church is largely OK with it. We give painkillers to the dying even when it may hasten their death, we drive cars knowing there is a chance we will get into an accident and kill someone, we feed our kids unhealthy and/or chemical-filled food even though it may increase the chance of them developing cancer. We could theoretically live without any of these things (we could allow people to die in pain, go back to walking everywhere, or seek out more expensive but healthier food options). And many of us do try to mitigate these negative effects, but we often accept these small risks because of the benefits that analgesics, cars, convenient and cheap food, etc offer. And hormonal contraception is seen by many, myself included, to offer many benefits from a medical and social perspective, even if the chance exists that it may indirectly cause a zygote to not implant (and it is indirect because it is not the primary mechanism of action and it only reduces the chances of implantation and does not eliminate the possibility entirely- many drugs we administer for reasons completely unrelated to contraception also do this). And to my knowledge, the Church accepts the administeration of these same pills when they are used to treat another condition (such as uterine fibroids) even though in these circumstances the pill carries these same risks. Based on my reading of the Cathechism, it seems that the Church’s primary objection to OCPs (and all other forms of birth control including barrier methods, which lack these additional risks), is that they somehow corrupt the sexual union of man and wife.</p>
<p>And of course, my argument does nothing to change these other objections the Church has to the use of non-NFP contraception (which I find I can’t make myself agree with, no matter how hard I have tried in the past). And I know that this, and a few of my other views are inconsistent with what’s in the Catechism, but I’m really just trying to be philosophically consistent and follow my own reason and conscience. For a long time I have tried to get my conclusions on this matter to match what I read in the Catechism because I do consider myself a Catholic and believe in most of what the Church teaches, but I have yet to be able to do that.</p>
<p>Also, in regards to the increase in breast cancer risk, recent research has brought that into question as the risk is only increased for 10 years after stopping the pill and cancers after that are less advanced than those in the non-OCP cohort, suggesting that OCPs may hasten the growth and detection of existing breast cancers but may not increase the pathogenesis or long-term risk. But this does remain somewhat unclear, so you are right that it is another factor to consider when weighing the pros and cons.</p>
<p>Shellie -</p>
<p>As a sinner, I know that true faith can be hard. As Catholics we believe salvation comes from both believing in Christ and keeping the commandments, as Christ’s own words state to the rich man. In the Gospel of John, in the bread of life discourse, all his followers abandoned him and he asked his disciples if they too would leave him. Peter’s reply is “to whom else shall we go…we know that you are the Christ, the Son of God”. Peter didn’t understand what he was saying either but was obedient to his word. Mary didn’t understand but was obedient to God as well. Likewise, we too have to be obedient to the authoritative teaching of the church, even where we don’t understand or even accept. Such is having the faith of a child…</p>
<p>Again, God Bless</p>
<p>
For the record, the employee plan is by Meritain Health and the student plan is by Aetna Student Health.</p>
<p>For the record, Meritain simply collects a fee for administering the employee health plan. Notre Dame is self-insured and bears all costs associated with its employee health insurance offerings. Not positive about the student health plan.</p>
<p>Gobluu-</p>
<p>I understand your point about the importance of faith, but faith and reason should never contradict each other. Even the great mysteries of the Church and the fullness of the glory of God, while too great for us to fully comprehend with our finite human minds, are not illogical. You may not be able to see them with your own eyes or prove that they are true, but you can’t prove them wrong either. That is where faith is important. Catholic tradition has never supported simply blindly accepting things that don’t make sense. There would be no great church thinkers if it had. If reason is bringing you away from something you have faith in, perhaps one of them is wrong. That is my issue here. I continue to gather new information and try to reason through it to see if I eventually come to the same conclusion as the Church, but I find I cannot reconcile that with my conscience. I may be wrong on this, but I think I we all have the right and responsibility to question moral teachings that make us uncomfortable. Not ones that we feel are inconvenient, but those that we feel are wrong. The Church is more than a bunch of bishops making arbitrary decisions and telling everyone what to do. The quest for truth is based on both faith AND reason and doesn’t just involve the pope, cardinals, and bishops, but ALL members of the church. That doesn’t mean that all discordant beliefs are right, that would be illogical and ridiculous, but why would God give us reason if not for us ALL to seek to better understand Him? Even authoritative teachings of the church have been refined or even changed in the past. This is of course a fantastically complicated process, but no change would ever occur if people didn’t bother thinking about these things. I think the greatest mistake we can make is getting complacent and stopping our search for moral answers or deferring it to others without question. God gave us the gift of reason, we really ought to use it.</p>
<p>Now I do believe that the Church does not teach anything that will lead one astray from the path of salvation if one is obedient to it. The non-infallible teachings of the church represent the deepest understanding the Church has reached at a given time, but that doesn’t mean they are never wrong. I think that a closer relationship with God requires further inspection into matters of faith and morality than blind obedience. I suppose that has led me to dissent and may make me a bad Catholic, but I’m coming to terms with that.</p>
<p>At least I’m not a Michigan fan :)</p>