HHS Talking – Viagra vs Birth Control

This is a series of short talking points that we have provided to our volunteers as information they can use in speaking out in various ways against the ObamaCare mandate on contraception. Feel free to use, build on, or share.

Why is the Catholic Church fine with providing coverage for Viagra for men, but not contraceptives for women? Doesn’t this prove they are just a bunch of men who disrespect women?

Most of the time when you hear this argument on radio talk shows or in letters to the editor, the caller or writer doesn’t actually care to know what the Church’s reasoning is; they just want to use this truth as a way to bash the Church.

But the Church always has reasons for their teachings, and in this case the truth is that the primary purpose of Viagra is to fix a health problem so that a husband can engage in sexual intimacy with his wife. It helps facilitate normal marital relations. The primary purpose of contraception is to cause a health problem, such that the reproductive system dysfunctions and prevents a woman from contracting the newly defined disease of pregnancy. The Church’s goal is to support and protect marital relations as God intended them to be.

The real irony of the complaints that label the Church’s non-support of birth control as anti-woman is that hormone-emitting methods of birth control (e.g., injectables like Depo-Provera and non-injectables like the Pill, patch, etc.) often cause a decrease in a woman’s libido! Seriously, how pro-woman is that?!