Stupid Complaint #8: No Licit Use?

Stupid Complaint #8: “Some people need those drugs for legitimate medical issues!  Or do you suggest we just cut them off from the medicine they need.”  

Basic Reply: The same drug can be used for different purposes and contexts with different ethical implications.  A medical plan can recognize the difference between using a drug as contraception and as medicine - and the ethical difference between those two.  

Further Explanation:

Everyone and their uncle knows that the inovulant birth control pill is also used to manage medical conditions like:

• Polycystic Ovary Syndrome: Hormonal imbalance associated with menstruation.
• Dysmenorrhea: Intense menstrual cramping.
• Menorrhagia: Prolonged menstrual bleeding.

And so when someone levels this complaint, he is assuming that since Catholic medical ethics would not permit prescribing the pill as contraception, the same drug cannot be used for ANY purposes.  Thus, when a woman comes in with one of those conditions, the best they can do is sign her "Get Well Soon" card.

Except... that's not at all how Catholic medical ethics works.  In fact, the same document which reiterated the Catholic position against contraception - Humanae Vitae - addressed this very question.  It says:

“On the other hand, the Church does not consider at all illicit the use of those therapeutic means necessary to cure bodily diseases, even if a foreseeable impediment to procreation should result there from—provided such impediment is not directly intended for any motive whatsoever.”  - Humanae Vitae, 15

So while a person is not permitted to take the pill as contraception, it is perfectly permissible to take it to treat a legitimate medical issue.  Thus, a Catholic employer - and whatever medical plan his business selects - would be perfectly fine paying for a prescription to the pill to treat an actual medical issue.

At the same time it is worth noting that the pill is not acting as a medicine when it is taken as contraception.  It's purpose in that instance is to take a healthy organ and render it inoperative.  That might be pharmaceutical, but it isn't medicinal.  Technically, it is recreational drug use.

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