Is pregnancy a disease?

My disdain for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius provides grist for scores of posts.

Here's one, part of the lead-up to the to the recent regulations requiring that Catholic institutions pay for health insurance that covers contraception:

Panel Recommends Coverage for Contraception

By ROBERT PEAR

Published: July 19, 2011WASHINGTON — A leading medical advisory panel recommended on Tuesday that all insurers be required to cover contraceptives for women free of charge as one of several preventive services under the new health care law.

Fertility is not a disease. Pregnancy is not an illness. Contraception is not 'preventative health care'. Contraception is a technique to facilitate having sex without having a baby. That is not "health". That is a personal choice, generally a lifestyle choice. It is not 'health care'.

Obama administration officials said that they were inclined to accept the panel’s advice and that the new requirements could take effect for many plans at the beginning of 2013. The administration signaled its intentions in January when Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, unveiled a 10-year program to improve the nation’s health. One goal was to “increase the proportion ofhealth insurance plans that cover contraceptive supplies and services.”

Damn right that the Obama administration is 'inclined' to accept the advice. The Obama administration is the most anti-Life administration in American history.

Administration officials, who say they hope to act on the recommendations by Aug. 1, are receptive to the idea of removing cost as a barrier to birth control — a longtime goal of advocates for women’s rights and experts on women’s health.

But the recommendations immediately reignited debate over the government’s role in reproductive health.

Why is contraception called "reproductive health". Why isn't it called "reproductive suppression"? How is the prevention of reproduction reproductive health? It's the antithesis of reproductive health. It's Orwellian.

Women’s groups and medical professionals applauded the recommendations while the Roman Catholic Church raised strenuous objections.

The recommendations came in a report submitted to Ms. Sebelius by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences. The new health care law says insurers must cover “preventive health services” and cannot charge for them.

Preventative health services prevent disease. What is the disease prevented by contraception?

Ms. Sebelius will decide on a minimum package of essential health benefits and her decision will not require further action by Congress. 

The panel said insurers should be forbidden to charge co-payments for contraceptives and other preventive services because even small charges could deter their use.

That's right. The provision of contraception to poor women has been a goal of these b*stards for a century. Give it away free, so the undesirables will use it. Justice Ginsburg said as much, and Margaret Sanger proclaimed it unabashedly for years.

The recommendation would not help women without insurance.

Don't worry. A major thrust of 'reproductive freedom' is making sure that the wrong kind of women don't reproduce too freely. Birth control has always been about controlling births among the 'wrong kind' of women. These folks will find a way to make sure that poor women get contraception.

The administration asked the Institute of Medicine, a nonpartisan, nongovernmental arm of the National Academy of Sciences, to help identify the specific services that must be covered for women.

“This report is historic,” Ms. Sebelius said on Tuesday in accepting the recommendations. “Before today, guidelines regarding women’s health and preventive care did not exist. These recommendations are based on science and existing literature.”

Right. Labeling pregnancy as a disease "is based on science and existing literature."

In addition to contraceptive services for women, the panel recommended that the government require health plans to cover screening to detect domestic violence; screening for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS;

That is, coverage for maladies caused in large part by government destruction of poor families by subsidizing family breakdown (welfare).

and counseling and equipment to promotebreastfeeding, including the free rental of breast pumps.

They want to make sure that the few babies who pass the gauntlet of contraception and abortion get breast milk. Aww....

Defending its recommendations on contraceptive coverage, the panel said that nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States were unintended, and that about 40 percent of unintended pregnancies ended in abortion. Thus, it said, greater use of contraceptionwould reduce the rates of unintended pregnancy, teen pregnancy and abortion.

But we've been using contraception at astronomically higher  rates since 1960, and abortion rates have gone astronomically down astronomically up. Don't actual facts matter to these people?

The chairwoman of the panel, Dr. Linda Rosenstock, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, said, “We did not consider cost or cost-effectiveness in our deliberations.”

The pill. $10

An abortion. $1000

Eliminating children of undesirables. Priceless.

But the panel’s report says that “contraception is highly cost-effective,” averting unintended pregnancies that would be far more expensive than contraception.

What the hell is "averting unintended pregnancies"? Sterilization? Abortion?  How about chastity? How expensive is that?

To reduce unintended pregnancies, the panel said, insurers should cover the full range of contraceptive methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration, as well as sterilization procedures and “education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.”

"Sterilization procedures". It's like they're trying to stop an insect infestation. Wanna bet on the proportion of affluent white women vs poor black women offered these 'education and counseling services for all women with reproductive capacity"?

This recommendation would require coverage of emergency contraceptives including pills like ella and Plan B, panel members said.

We need multiple levels of protection against the unwanted.

Under rules issued last year, many health plans are already required to cover numerous preventive services like blood pressure and cholesterol tests, colonoscopies and othercancer screenings, and routine vaccinations. A provision of the law drafted by Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, requires coverage of “additional preventive care and screenings” for women.

Nice. They categorize pregnancy with hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and colon cancer.

Most private insurance provides contraceptive coverage, but co-payments have increased in recent years, the panel said.

Oh no. You don't want people paying for contraception. That would mean that wealthy people would contracept at a higher rate than poor people. How un-eugenic.

The report touched off a fierce debate Tuesday. Obstetricians, gynecologists, public health experts and Democratic women in Congress hailed the recommendations.

“We are one step closer to saying goodbye to an era when simply being a woman is treated as a pre-existing condition,” Senator Mikulski said. “We are saying hello to an era where decisions about preventive care and screenings are made by a woman and her doctor, not by an insurance company.”

A woman needs her doctor to prevent pregnancy?

Representative Lois Capps, Democrat of California, said the recommendations would remove cost as a barrier to birth control — and in hard economic times like these, she said, cost can be a formidable barrier.

'Affluent women can get all the birth control they want now. Poor (non-white) women often have cost constraints.  The government needs to fix this.' Can you figure this one out?

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and some conservative groups, including the Family Research Council, denounced the recommendation on birth control.

“Pregnancy is not a disease, and fertility is not a pathological condition to be suppressed,” said Deirdre A. McQuade, a spokeswoman for the bishops’ Pro-Life Secretariat. “But the Institute of Medicine report treats them as such.”

Ms. McQuade expressed deep concern about requiring coverage of surgical sterilizations and contraceptive drugs and devices.

Jeanne Monahan, the director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, said: “Some people have moral or ethical objections to contraceptives. They should not be forced to violate their conscience by paying premiums to health plans that cover these items and services.”

The Catholic Church is the only large organization standing against this evil. A voice of sanity.

The Catholic viewpoint: love, marriage, sex and procreation are parts of a whole, a seamless fabric. Contraception is to sex as bulimia is to nourishment. Lifelong love gives rise to new life. In many ways, having children is the most beautiful of God's gifts. We are given the astonishing privilege of participating in the creation of new life.

One panel member, Prof. Anthony Lo Sasso, a health economist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, filed a dissent, saying the committee did not have enough time to conduct “a serious and systematic review” of the evidence.

The report, he said, includes “a mix of objective and subjective determinations filtered through a lens of advocacy.”

Prof. Lo Sasso told the truth. Bless him. Hope he has tenure.