Freedom from Government (Birth) Control | Carrie Gress | Catholic World Report
An interview with Helen Alvaré of Women Speak for Themselves
Washington, DC – More than 40,000 women are putting religious freedom
ahead of the political fiction that says all women want free
contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients.
Catholic World Report caught up with Helen Alvaré to find out more about what this growing group of women is doing to fight the HHS mandate.
Alvaré is a professor of law at George Mason University, a consultor to
the Pontifical Council for the Laity, a consultant for ABCNews, and the
chair of the Conscience Protection Task Force at the Witherspoon
Institute. She co-authored and edited the book, Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak For Themselves.
CWR: What is “Women Speak for Themselves” and how did it come about?
Alvaré: It came about because I was shocked and
dismayed that the news reports about the response to the HHS mandate, as
well as the words out of the mouths of some members of Congress,
claimed that this HHS mandate fight was women vs. men. And bad men,
particularly religious men, hated women and therefore opposed the
mandate. I knew that this was untrue in my own situation and I knew many
women who would feel the same.
The news reports were pouring in on February 16, 2012, and I decided
that I should draft an open letter. I bounced it back and forth with my
good friend Kim Daniels, who is a religious liberty attorney, and we
crafted it and sent it out to a couple of dozen friends and asked for
signatures. This cascade of signatures started to come in so that in
about 48 hours we had about 2,500, and by the end of the week we had
7,500. We hadn’t done any asking beyond that original couple dozen
women, so we knew there was an untapped, unvocalized sentiment out
there. We expressed it in two points: one is that women particularly
care for religious freedom and second, the idea that contraception
equals women’s freedom and trumps religious freedom was simplistic and
wrong.
It has now grown to about 40,000-41,000 women online with whom I
correspond about every three weeks to keep them up-to-date on things
that affect the mandate and religious liberty, but increasingly things
that affect the whole plane that basically says the ability to express
yourself sexually is the biggest part of women’s freedom.
CWR: What is the current situation with the HHS ruling?
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