“There is no shortage of students and employees who want to go to/work for Notre Dame for whom this is a non-issue.”
True, but there is a shortage of top research scientists who are not Jews or atheists. That is an issue. You can’t replace an Albert Einstein with an Albert McDonald, or a Steven Hawking with a Steven Kelly.
All of this would be simpler if we had a single payer system, like most other civilized countries do. It shouldn’t be up to employers to subsidize medical care, or to decide who should receive what.
@Massmomm Then it would be up to the government to decide who should receive what and more importantly when they should receive it.
An even better analogy is to think of birth control as “preventive” which in essence it is and it is sometimes used as a treatment for other things. But there are other drugs that are similar that are prescribed for “preventive” measures and sometimes for treatment, like statins, etc so the irony is because BC is an outlier since other preventive medications are not necessarily omitted from some insurances but it is connected to the issue that will never have united traction, pregnancy and birth and beliefs. I’m really torn on this because if you have money you can find your birth control but the ones who should be using birth control most, the people who really can’t afford kids and probably would be better off not having a bunch of kids and are already being subsidized by taxpayers are the ones who may also have the most trouble finding access to cheap or free birth control but these are the same folks who have trouble accessing healthcare in general. I’m not terribly concerned with university staff, profs and students.
Not too sure exactly what this means, and how BC fits in. Are you suggesting that such scientists will choose not to work at ND solely bcos of not paying for birth control?
Yes, I believe it is.
Where WOULD you draw the line? (aside from the case where there were zero other choices)
If you believe in freedom, you’d want both the government and your employer (unless it is a medical provider) out of medical care entirely. Freedom is earning your own money and paying for your own stuff. I just don’t get how smart people equate not paying for something to banning it. Clearly they must have failed their logic class. If you are really worried start a non-profit that will provide free BC for ND students and ND staff. Any takers?
@TomSrOfBoston , I agree that this would be scary, but it would be far more consistent than leaving people’s employers to decide.
“If you are really worried start a non-profit that will provide free BC for ND students and ND staff. Any takers?”
I already mentioned it a few pages back - Planned Parenthood on the outskirts of campus. And yes, I put my money where my mouth is.
"True, but there is a shortage of top research scientists who are not Jews or atheists.
Not too sure exactly what this means, and how BC fits in. Are you suggesting that such scientists will choose not to work at ND solely bcos of not paying for birth control?"
I am suggesting that not accommodating other views, and treating women like second class citizens makes it more difficult to attract and retain world class faculty and researchers. It isn’t that Jews and atheists are mad that they can’t get BC for free, it is that they are not comfortable with the way you treat women and non-Catholics.
I don’t think you will see mass resignations, but I do suspect it will make it harder to recruit top professors. On the upside, a lot of Catholic families are already not happy that their Catholic kid was rejected, but a Muslim, Jew or atheist too their spot. There is a silver lining here. Still I think it is likely to hurt their ranking over time.
To attract top talent and be a world class university, they need to function like a secular institution. To make the Catholic hierarchy happy they have to move away from that position as they are in this case. The difficulty is in trying to achieve both simultaneously. For example, Liberty University, Oral Roberts, etc. have all decided that they would rather focus on religion. That is fine, but has a big impact on professors and students they attract.
@sylvan8798 Hahaha…yes I guess anyone can have sex. But others shouldn’t have to pay for that right.
ND is the largest employer in their county. They didn’t provide free BC before Obamacare. People were working there and students were attending all those years previously. I don’t recall mass protests then. This current decision impacts employees and the students on the school’s health insurance, which presumably is a very small percentage of students.
I don’t think this will have any impact on student applications…my kids were well aware of this before they applied/attended; same with parietals, etc. Fr. Jenkins makes clear in his freshman student/parent move-in meetings, that they “aren’t trying to be the best university in the world, they seek to be the best Catholic University in the world.”
I guess I’m just sort of surprised when people get all surprised that a Catholic university is following Catholic teachings.
Maybe, just maybe, ND (and Boston College and Georgetown) are happy being a world-class Catholic university. If that means it costs them a few rankings’ points against secular Unis, then so be it.
Fortunately, there are nearly 3,000 other great colleges in the US, most of which are secular.
Bingo; and true for all of them mentioned above. Yet, no shortage of applications for undergrad or their grad/professional schools, the latter of which are probably much less Catholic than undergrad. (my pure guess)
Not likely, since their Catholicism has been baked into their rankings for decades, before the ACA.
Darn. They will have to buy their own condoms or pills. Just like everyone else in history ever before the last few years. I’ve never used the pill (and don’t have a boatload of kids) but it’s what, $10-15 a month?
This is a nonissue. No one takes a job because someone will pay for their birth control pill.
I must say that I think the blithe assumption that kids are on their parents/ insurance rubs me the wrong way. When my S started college, we were uninsured. He had to be on the college’s plan.
He had no other spending money than what he could earn. For girl in his position, $25-50 a month for contraception would be a very, very big deal.
As usual, those with the least money and fewest options are the ones most affected by this stuff.
If sex is a “right”, as some above assert, it certainly is not being curtailed by the refusal of someone entity to pay for your contraception. You just have to understand that sex has consequences, and prevent those consequences.
Condoms are cheap.
No one is stopping anyone from having sex, no matter how good or bad an idea it is in any given circumstance. I do agree that insurance should be entirely detached from employers.
“They didn’t provide free BC before Obamacare.”
And they didn’t provide it AFTER Obamacare either.
They opted out (like most Catholic schools) and the coverage was provided by a third party insurer and the premiums were paid for by the federal government (as allowed by Obamacare). They’ve NEVER provided it. EVER.
ND says very clearly that they’re not really interested in trying to get the highest ranking possible on the USNWR ladder. Instead, they’re trying to be the best version of what they aspire to be – the #1 Catholic research university in the world.
Seems to be working for them. Yield for the 2021 class was 55% and that is without using ED or SCEA. Middle 50% ACT score was 33-35. Which is a bit higher than the scores at Stanford and at Harvard.
Comparisons with Oral Roberts (ACT 19-24) and Liberty (19-26) are obviously ridiculous.
I grew up very Catholic and even a million years ago, all Catholic girls in late college & above were on birth control of some sort. The thing I really don’t understand about this is that we’re not talking about terminating pregnancy…I can better understand the strong emotions around that…but instead stopping the pregnancy from happening at all. It defies logic.
“I already mentioned it a few pages back - Planned Parenthood on the outskirts of campus. And yes, I put my money where my mouth is.”
FYI South Bend PP office is currently located 3.9 miles from the Golden Dome…