Bill O'Reilly apparently believes that every woman who can't afford birth control has "millions" of options available to them and that women's health care providers like Planned Parenthood are just handing out birth control pills for free to anyone left and right. Which in O'Reilly's opinion makes the Catholic Church's view on not providing coverage for birth control as part of their insurance coverage just fine.
O'REILLY: Look, Reverand, if a Catholic woman or woman who's not Catholic, let's say a women who's not Catholic is working in a Catholic hospital, okay. I've got a very fine Catholic hospital near me, St. Francois out of Manhattan, terrific hospital, and not everybody's Catholic in there... and they want their people...
HAFFNER: And not all their patients are Catholic.
O'REILLY: Right. And they want the mandate. They want birth control. And the Catholic Church says, you know what, this goes against our teaching so, we don't mind you do what you want on your time and there are a million clinics around that'll give it to you free, and you know that, there's clinics everywhere that do it, so what's the beef? They respect the religious tradition of their system. It's not like they're not going to get... they won't be able to get it Reverend!
I haven't used a Planned Parenthood clinic for my health care in quite a long time, but years ago they worked off of a sliding scale as to what they charged for some of their services, and they weren't free for everyone by any means. And they certainly would not have been free for someone who has a full time job and hopefully is making a living wage that O'Reilly's talking about here that work for the Catholic Church.
I'd love for O'Reilly to elaborate on who he's talking about here that supposedly give women who earn a decent wage or salary, and who aren't destitute, that are supposedly being handed "free" birth control pills and contraceptive services, but I don't expect to hear that explanation out of him any time soon.
And as I've elaborated in earlier posts that seems to be completely lost on Bill O'Reilly, preventing pregnancy is not the only reason for women to go on birth control pills. They have other health benefits as well. Sadly that wasn't pointed out to him during this interview.
