Memo to Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar
Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar’s screeching about birth control and rights, Christians and the Taliban has sunk to depths of hysterical dopiness previously uncharted.
Once again, they gathered around their table of gab last week to smear those who don’t want to be forced to pay for someone else’s contraception. They sounded the alarm over the impending calamity about to fall on American women who would be deprived of their God-given right to all manner of contraception at no cost to them. The sky is falling! Women are simply doomed! And it’s all because of mean-spirited, uptight, religious fanatics — such as the Little Sisters of the Poor — who want to impose their beliefs on everyone and force every woman to live by their religious rules.
“How are these people any different than the Taliban?” they asked, for the umpteenth time, with total exasperation.
Well, Whoopi and Joy, let me help you with a few, obvious distinctions.
First, let’s start with your beloved birth control. It’s not medicine, because fertility is not a disease. Fertility isn’t a malfunction of any bodily system, but in fact a healthy and proper function. Medicine treats disease.
I wasn’t aware that diabetics received their insulin free of charge, or that people with heart disease received their medication free of charge, or that cancer patients received their life-saving treatments free of charge. If actual medicine that treats actual diseases and actually keeps people alive is not given out for free, why in the world should the Pill, the patch, or the IUD be thrown at women like confetti? Women do not deserve free contraception just because some want it.
Let’s also remember that the Pill is widely available for about $10 bucks a month, and has been for at least a decade now. Yeah, it’s an outrageous expense! (And if even ten dollars is just too much, I can tell you how to avoid pregnancy for free.)
No one is taking away women’s contraception, or telling any woman she can’t use it if she wants to. The folks doing the imposing here are you. You want to impose the demand of free contraception on every individual and employer, and those who dare to object to your unreasonable demand are branded misogynist, religious fanatics who want to keep women down. (Oh, yawn.)
Now, onto this crazy obsession you have with conflating Christians with the Taliban. I’m Catholic, so I’ll speak for my own Church — especially since I know you have a special contempt for the Catholic Church. Let’s do an easy comparison to start with.
The Catholic Church has been educating girls all over the world for many, many, many centuries now.
When girls and women were condemned to a life of illiteracy and ignorance by the authorities of the time, the Church came in and upheld their dignity and worth and educated them. The Church is still doing that all over the world today.
In contrast, the Taliban forbids girls to be educated. Girls who desire an education risk execution if caught. Perhaps you remember Malala Yousafzai?
The Catholic Church not only does not sanction, but expressly forbids, child marriage, and any manner of forced marriage. No marriage exists unless the man and woman both enter into it with total, free assent.
In contrast, the Taliban has no such concern for age or freedom. Young girls are often forced into marriage.
Women under the Taliban cannot be out in public without a blood relative. They cannot have contact with any males other than their husband or blood relatives. They are covered from head to toe in the burqa.
They cannot speak loudly in public. They must not be visible from the streets, so the windows of their houses must be painted or covered.
There is no Catholic sanction for girls to be mutilated, tortured, shot, burned with acid, sold into slavery, raped under the guise of marriage, held captive in their homes, or regarded as property.
In contrast, a young girl named Bibi Aisha tried to flee a forced marriage, and when she was caught, the Taliban cut off her nose and ears to make an example out of her, lest other young girls get any ideas.
With all of these facts as foundation, you still want to insist that not wanting to be forced to pay for someone else’s birth control is the equivalent of the Taliban? If so, no one should take anything you say seriously.
You preach “tolerance” while practicing intolerance. You chat up rights while wanting to violate the rights of others. You claim, “Just let me do what I need to do and leave me alone” even as you demand that Catholic nuns who spend their lives caring for the poor and outcast fork over the money for your abortion and birth control pills. Worst of all, you loathe any suggestion that one’s sexual activities really are one’s own responsibility.
But here’s the truth: No one owes you or anyone else free contraception. Buy your own Pills and devices if you can’t live without them. (For more from the author of “Memo to Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar” please click HERE)
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