The Obama Administration’s unrevised healthcare bill ignited controversy among religiously-affiliated employers by requiring health insurance that includes free birth control as preventative care for consumers and employees.
Before the revision of the bill, the recent controversy in the news left students, both male and female, contemplating why contraception is not and cannot be accessible to everyone regardless of religious affiliation. SRJC student Justin Dowling said birth control should be accessible to everyone. When asked if free birth control is a violation of church and state, Dowling said, “I think health and religion are completely unrelated.”
Religiously-affiliated employers say the government’s attempt to dictate the way they serve customers and employees is unnecessary because offering birth control is against their beliefs.
Student Lydia Fossgreen disagrees. She said even religious people don’t follow everything and married people have more sex that results in childbirth, so it should be accessible to everyone.
The SRJC’s Student Health Services offers free contraception to all 30,166 students from condoms to an array of birth controls.
However, for those with religious beliefs, free contraception may contradict the practices they hold sacred.
SRJC Student Charity Stine, said that because she has religious beliefs, she knows how hard it is to compromise those beliefs and she is happy the bill had been revised. The revision states that employees and consumers may receive birth control directly through their own insurers but religiously-affiliated hospitals can opt out of directly giving employees birth control.
This revision has some students shaking their heads thinking that such a sexually active generation may need free contraception despite religious beliefs. “Everyone should have access and access should be free. We live in a sexually active society and to prevent unwanted pregnancy is crucial,” Dowling said.
Some students questioned whether birth control in religiously-affiliated employers is a violation of church and state. Stine said, “People always support separation of church and state to ensure the freedom of people from religion, but when it goes the other way, people think that religion shouldn’t be free from the state as well. I don’t think [birth control] should be required because they provide their services as a religious institution and that goes along with what they believe as an institution.”
Students looking for free contraception can go to the Student Health Services by walk-in or appointment.
