Your Google calendar sends you an email reminding you it's time to run to the pharmacy and pick up your birth control pills. You head to the pharmacy before it closes, pull out your parents' insurance card and walk away with some peace of mind. If you've watched TV or even glanced at the Internet in the past three weeks, however, you've noticed that monthly errand has been thrust into our country's moral coliseum.
Part of the health care reform legislation passed in 2010 requires health insurance companies to provide contraception coverage to women, in accordance with the recommendation of medical experts around the country. Ensuing debates about the law's treatment of religious employers and institutions erupted into a volcano of vitriol in the media.
The original bill did not compel directly religious organizations, such as churches, synagogues and mosques, to pay insurance premiums for contraception to which they were morally opposed. But entities such as church-affiliated hospitals did have to pay for those contraceptive services.
Religious groups, especially bishops within the Catholic Church, were angry that affiliated institutions would be forced to pay for contraceptive services in a nation founded with freedom of religion. Women's rights groups, meanwhile, demanded the law protect the liberty which birth control provides to millions of women. And thus the battle lines were drawn in the sand.
What happened next was surprising for our U.S. political system. The president humbly admitted the law had overreached, and he sought a middle ground which would satisfy the complaints of both parties. He shifted the burden to insurance companies, saying insurers of religiously affiliated organizations would have to provide contraception coverage and education to women in those organizations free-of-charge. Insurance companies had to absorb the costs themselves, which freed objecting organizations from paying for contraception.
Women would be covered. Disagreeing employers would not have to pay. Most of the major stakeholders offered guarded praise. You'd think when a single political move garners praise from both Planned Parenthood and the Catholic Health Association, that's a major win for reasonable problem solving in government.
But critics immediately cried foul, labeling the move as a deception. They said objecting organizations would still indirectly fund their employees' contraception through their premiums, although the compromise specifically stipulates the premiums cannot be increased to provide additional contraceptive benefits. For nearly every other type of health care benefit, the critics would be absolutely correct in calling the move a poorly disguised shell game. But since contraception costs a lot less than nine months of pregnancy health care and child delivery, this actually makes economic sense for the insurance companies too. In an unexpected twist of fate, the insurance companies actually have a monetary incentive to absolve their religiously affiliated clients of any moral uncertainty while preserving the ability of women at those institutions to obtain birth control. Cue the "Beautiful Mind" music with Russell Crowe writing on windows. We've found an elegant equilibrium.
Finding common ground amid a murky swamp of opposing constitutionally supported values is a difficult feat. Running a country marked by such strong and disparate views is challenging. As a Christian medical student who has seen firsthand the heavy personal, financial and educational cost unintended pregnancy unleashes on a young woman, though, this reasoned, moderate approach brings a faint smile to my face. Just this once, our polarizing politics and media arrived at a moderate balance.
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