And why shouldn't Jehovah Witness employers be able to deny coverage for blood transfusions?

Or any "good" Christian employer deny coverage for the treatment of AIDS or any other STD?

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>>Liberals confuse me with their"keep your hands off my body" when it comes to abortion but will completely allow and vote for politicians who want a complete takeover of the healthcare system.<
.
I think it's all the propaganda you've plugged into that confuses you.
Libs and lefties are Pro-Choice.

Got that?

When there's no choice in any plan there goes your what? Freedom?

Boozman doesn't learn. His bro lost the same Senate seat because his bro, Faye, was opposed to abortion even for rape. Faye's famous words were that a woman couldn't get pregnant from a rape.

Like the Shut-down-the-internet law, SOPA and PIPA which Boozman co-sponsored, he'll find himself backing out of this one too.

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Here the range of cost for one popular pill:

The retail cost of Yaz birth control pills without insurance is $49.99 per pack (A pack of Yaz, which contains 24 active pills and 4 placebos, lasts 28 days – just under a month).

Depending on women's insurance plans and pharmaceutical retailers, the cost of Yaz birth control can range from $35 for 3 packs to around $109 for 3 packs.

http://www.adrugrecall.com/yaz-birth-contr…

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The 58% figure may be from a link I posted earlier today, discussing the results of a recent poll by Public Religion Research Institute: http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=….

I probably wasn't as clear as I might have been when I previously discussed that poll. It shows more than 58% of Catholics in the U.S. stating that they think insurance plans should cover contraception as a matter of basic health care.

My point was that those who claim the consciences of Catholics are being violated by the Obama administration's HHS decision aren't looking at the polling data for American Catholics. They're also ignoring the data showing 98% of American Catholic women using contraceptives.

I'm not sure of the percentage of Americans as a whole who approve or disapprove of adding contraception to health plans. For Catholics, it's certainly a solid majority.

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I'm just now seeing that Andrew Sullivan covers the same polling data at his Daily Dish blog a little bit earlier today: http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/20….

58% of Catholics think all employers should cover contraceptives in health care plans, while 55% of all Americans think this. For white evangelicals, the figure drops down to 38%.

One conclusion that can be reached from the data: many of the white male evangelicalss now claiming that they're defending the consciences of Catholics are really speaking for themselves, as white male evangelicals.

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Whenever a sex-related topic arises, the sexually-inadequate males and their submissive Auntie Cathies (female Uncle Toms) get into a lather. Any woman who has sex without the permission of a male authority has to have Consequences, otherwise they are wanton sluts and damned to Hell. (Where, since some of the nicest people I know are going to, must be a pleasant place.) The simplest example of the male prerogative is the insurance coverage for viagra but not contraceptives. Another is the republican genocidal practice of denying funding for condoms in AIDS prevention programs.

The "religious" institutions that are covered by the insurance rule are businesses without a religious purpose. Just as those businesses have to pay taxes, unlike actual church institutions, they are subject to government regulations. In the case of hospitals, which are theoretically non-profit, there are very few left where the religious element is central to their core, and now are "religious" in name only.

The professionals these hospitals hire are entitled to insurance that covers their medical needs. These professionals are dedicated to the care of patients, not male superiority myths.

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"Wait til the govt. takes on healthcare and you'll see what "choice" means or lack thereof... and also lack of quality..."

As someone who has received his healthcare from the military or the VA for my entire almost 60 years, I can say that the quality has been quite good and I have been happy with the options I have been given.

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"Working women of America — and those covered by spouses' insurance — would find their reproductive freedom and, for those who use pills for medical reasons, their health subject to the whims of an employer."

No, they would have who would get the bill from the pharmacy subject to the whims of an employer. Believe it or not, but health insurance does not equal health care. You are presenting a false dichotomy.

If you are really concerned about women's access to birth control then you should be screaming at the FDA to make it available OTC and let Walmart sell it for $4 a month. It's a couple of decades overdue.

Can we tax employer provided health benefits yet? The connection between employers and health insurance is absurd.

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This just highlights the absurdity of employer provided health care insurance.

A most personal, fundamental and important decision made by a boss who's primary concern is cost reduction.

Would anyone let their boss pick their church, spouse, or house?

What if you chose a career job with a company and they are bought out and decide no (fill in the blank).

Take this to the absurd, what if a snake handling cult bought your employer? Hey, no low cost healthcare! Your new COBRA is an actual cobra!

What if an Atheist bought your employer and said no more church goers?

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If you are tired of the very contentious back and forth on this issue and need a break, click the link and listen to Washington Republican State Senator Maureen Walsh speaking for passage of the gay marriage bill. Her time starts at 87:30. It's not great oratory, but from the heart and very moving. The bill passed yesterday, and the Catholic governor of Washington has said she will sign it. She's no wobbly democrat and I bet her bishop would find it very difficult to make her quake in her boots with threats of excommunication or not serving her communion.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/…

Coolbreeze, I saw your response to me on the Pulaski Tech thread. You say you don't believe in race mixing. Fine. I hope you don't believe that it is okay to legislate against it.

You also said you don't believe in GLBT rights. Fine. I hope you don't think that legislating against them or denying them all the rights of citizenship the rest of us enjoy is something we should do.

You say you are not a bible thumper but then you tell me what you think is in the mind of God to justify your opposition to GLBT rights. I am not a bible thumper either, although I know the bible better than most, and I would venture I know it better than most fundamentalists.

I have read theology from the ancient Gnostics and Augustine to Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr as well as many eastern philosophers and I never learned anything about the mind of God from them. What I learned about a loving God, Creator, whatever you wish to call it, was in watching my parents and how they loved my two brothers, my sister, and me. That is how God loves all of us---every race, every sexual orientation, every faith, believers, and non-believers.

You were not born believing the things you expressed, Coolbreeze. They had to be taught. I bless my parents everyday for not teaching me as you have been taught. You can un-learn all of those things.

I don't believe in prayer, except for prayers of thanksgiving, so I can't say I'll pray for you. Thank you for taking the time to answer

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Outlier, what a powerful and well-written statement. Your parents produced a wonderful human being. I hope Coolbreeze listens carefully to what you have to say here.

And you're right, Maureen Walsh's testimony is wonderful.

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Can someone explain the difference between fertilization and conception? One seems to be such a common occurrence that nobody makes much of it. The other, especially its, "moment", seems so very special to many people. Isn't it that moment that makes the morning-after pill, or Plan B, an "abortifacient."

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Doc, fertilization and conception are pretty much the same thing. It almost always occurs in the Fallopian tubes. Conception is when the sperm and the egg unite to form one cell. It starts dividing immediately. It usually takes a few days for the fertilized/dividing egg to travel from the fallopian tubes into the uterus where it implants itself in the uterine wall. IUD's and hormone based pills prevent implantation, not conception. Ron Paul was tying himself in knots the other day to justify the morning after pill for rape (he said "honest rapes") victims. He basically said it is okay, because you don't know at that stage if conception has occurred. I never figured out if he felt "dishonest rapes" deserved a morning after pill.

It has been 40 years since I studied embryology, but I do know that the fetus goes through all the evolutionary stages during its development. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. In the early stages, the untrained eye would have a difficult time telling the difference between a human and a puppy or a whale, or a chicken for that matter.

Over the years I had numerous patients who were born with brachial cleft cysts. These are cysts that form in the gill slits during the early stage of development when the fetus actually has gills like a fish. They are harmless and generally removed.

I can't remember at what stage implantation occurs. The blastula stage is about the size of the head of a pin and is like a fluid filled hollow ball. Both ends start to invaginate and meet somewhere in the middle. At this stage, the embryo is like an earth worm---basically just an alimentary canal. Very soon after another invagination occurs along the dorsal length of the "worm" forming a neural tube which will house the spine. Neural tube defects like spina bifida occur when this tube does not close completely.

I'm pretty sure that embryonic stem cells for research are taken from the blastula stage or earlier. It is all very fascinating, and the amazing thing is more birth defects not occurring since everything has to happen in a certain sequence and so much can go wrong. Spontaneous abortions or miscarriages are often due to something going wrong and nature taking care of it.

This is probably more information than you wanted.

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I just can't understand why it is a sin to prevent the male sperm from coming into contact with the female egg, and why the Catholic Church and a lot of fundamentalist evangelicals think that people do not have a right to prevent this from happening. It was only in 1968, or so, in the case of Griswold vs. Connecticut that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Americans had a right to birth control. Now the Republicans are trying to do away with this right by allowing religious employers to restrict access to birth control. I am happy that the President has taken this position, and I hope that his Party will stand behind him. How do we convince the religionists that there is a difference between conscience and law, and that it is impossible, and wrong, to try to legislate moral or religious tenets.

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Why does the GOT Party hate women so much?

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I'm trying to re-frame all this in a different way. Employers compensate their employees in different ways. They give them money; they give them benefits. Once the money leaves the employers, it belongs to the employee. The employee is fit to do with it what he/she wishes. The employer no longer has any control over that money and what it goes for. The employee can use it to buy food, shelter, and clothing. The employee can use it to gamble, to over eat, to buy tobacco, alcohol, drugs, or other things considered harmful by the employer.

Why is it that the medical plan couldn't be considered the same way by the employer? Even if they are Roman Catholic? Once the benefit accrues to the employee, it belongs to the employee and is under their control and their responsibility, not the employer's. It's not as if the employees are forced to use birth control or any other benefit. It's their choice to use the benefit or not, not the employer's.

Can you imagine the outcry if an employer tried to control what the employee did with his/her monetary compensation? Why is the health benefit any different? Why is it that an employer can force their religious preference on their employees by removing the employees' choice over what they do with their own personal compensation?

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MUST Norma explain everything?

The query regards the difference between fertilization and conception. With an aside to the morning-after pill as an abortifactant.

The moment when sperm meets egg is technically fertilization, my Razorbabies.

Conception can't occur until the fertilized egg implants in the uterine wall. Until implantation, no pregnancy. No conception, Belford U. graduates.

Honestly.

You cut class the day they explained all this?

You're paying for it now.

Conception / pregnancy begins when the fertilized egg implants in the uterine wall. Then ONLY is a POSSIBILE fetus conceived.

"Possibly," because some 60% of the time God (or let's just call it biology) STILL aborts the "baby" naturally at that just-beginning stage. The woman often never realizes she's even pregnant. At later stages of pregnancy it's called a miscarriage or a spontaneous abortion because by then she knows.

The morning-after pill prevents implantation in the uterine wall. A fertilized egg cannot become a fetus without implantation. Which sometimes happens in a "bad" place.

The morning-after pill eliminates implantation. No pregnancy -- no conception -- no fetus ever exists. There is nothing to "abort." The pill isn't an abortifactant.

None of which stops religionists from lying about the whole thing because for centuries they've homesteaded subservient women's wombs and now presume to own them.

But, honestly. Only an uneducated theocratic idiot would still fall for that line.

How tiresome, in the 21st Century Land of the Free.

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But Norma, we all know that "life" begins at fertilization. At least that is what they were saying on American Family Association radio yesterday.

BTW, here is an example of a university behaving rationally:

http://tribune-democrat.com/latestnews/x29…

Students at a Pennsylvania university can obtain an emergency contraceptive from an unusual source – a health center vending machine.

The vending machine inside Shippensburg University’s Etter Health Center provides Plan B along with condoms, decongestants and pregnancy tests.

Vice President for Student Affairs Roger Serr says the machine was installed following a request from the school’s Student Association and a survey found 85 percent of student respondents supported it.

Plan B is available without a prescription to anyone 17 or older.

The cost of the drug isn’t covered or subsidized by the school. Instead it is supplied for $25, the school’s cost to the pharmaceutical company and less than at off-campus pharmacies.

Shippensburg is a school of about 8,300 students about 90 miles southeast of Johnstown.

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“Can someone explain the difference between fertilization and conception?”
Fertilization is the union of sperm and ovum, whereas conception is the implantation of the blastocyst. It is not synonymous with fertilization.

For more, see The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/08/2/gr…

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My question was meant to be sarcastic, but I've learned something here tonight!

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I once got in that when-does-life-begin argument, Arkie, with a devout -- who remembers what? One of the Christianist sects. But DEVOUT.

"But Life," I patiently explained, "is already there in the sperm! It's not dead" (Visualizing thousands of little swimmers.) "Life's there in the egg already! It's not dead either!" (Visualizing a carton of a dozen Duggars.) "There IS no beginning or end to Life! It just changes forms -- that's all!"

Of course, that concept was beyond them, as it is lost to every theocrat.

Human life, to them, is the only life that counts. Which explains their total lack of caring for any OTHER life-forms including the planet's and all other species, plant and animal, that call earth "Home."

Except maybe their pets -- whom they have no compunction about spaying and neutering and putting down when it's "right."

The self-centered arrogance of these people's clenched narrow lives is psychopathic.

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Norma, your definition of 'conception' is somewhat...how shall I say it....interesting. The definition of 'conception' is according to Wikipedia:

"Fertilisation (also known as conception, fecundation and syngamy) is the fusion of gametes to produce a new organism. In animals, the process involves the fusion of an ovum with a sperm, which eventually leads to the development of an embryo."

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It appears that Biden is telegraphing that obama will make a deal with the Catholics by exempting them from his regulation. The margins in elections are simply too narrow to alienate Catholics.

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The Catholics this would "alienate" wouldn't vote for him anyway. He'll cave - always does. Wish he had 50% of the "resolve" of Bush Lite! These nimrods keep succeeding to keep the focus on red-meat bullshit instead of our REAL problems. Meanwhile THIS is the model of governing that's supposed to attract the world to "democracy?" Delusional.

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IF this was actually about religious freedom, the "leadership" raising objections wouldn't give a rat about the access mandate, they would trust their flocks to make the "proper" choice and not elect contraception. As always, it's about control of OTHERS' choices/behavior.

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IF this was actually about religious freedom,
why are they against Sharia law?

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So is every sperm sacred or not?

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