The Religious Right, and especially the Catholic church, have been out in force this week to lambast the president’s plan to have employers cover contraception in their health insurance. This should honestly ?not come as a surprise to anyone, yet all of the sudden the panicked voices of Catholic women sparked up after the news was released. Why?

As it turns out, according to a 2011 study by the Guttmacher ?Institute, 98% of sexually active catholic women are on, or have used,?birth control at some point in their lives.?? It gets better: the Obama administration proceeded to offer a?compromise that would allow religious institutions to be exempt from?the law, and force insurance companies to pick up the tab in?stead.

But just recently, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops? decided to reject the White House’s compromise too, and now female? employees of religious institutions are forced to go without ?institutional access to birth control that is in many cases used for? medicinal purposes rather than simply as a contraceptive — and now these? women are angry and betrayed by the institution that they have devoted ?themselves to.

I couldn’t care less. ??These women have supported the stripping of rights away from the? general populace of other women for ages. Whether it be stances? against Planned Parenthood, sex education, abortion, or gay and ?lesbian rights, the Catholic church has rigidly hard-lined its? opposition to what many consider basic human rights.

Yet, now that the ?focus has come home and the target is now on their own backs, these? women decide to speak up and show outrage?

How dare they.

The Catholic church has never once balked at its patriarchal stances ?and archaic views of women in society, and these employees have gone ?along with it just fine — until now.

It was acceptable for the Church ?to play politics with the lives of women so long as they were against? the godless liberals at Planned Parenthood, but now that the focus has ?turned to their own base they speak out that this system is unjust?

The women of the Catholic church need to realize that they cannot have ?it both ways; they need to either make a serious motion for real ?change in their institution, or keep their heads down and continue to ?support the system as it is, for all its disdain toward women all over the world, themselves included.

Victor French

junior from Naperville studying music business