"fertility is not a disease"

In a 2001 Washington Post article, a woman named Susan Orr was quoted:

[She] applauded a Bush proposal to stop requiring all health insurance plans for federal employees to cover a broad range of birth control. "We're quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease."

Susan Orr has just been appointed by the Bush administration as a chief of family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Orr is not a medical doctor. Her B.A. is in politics from the University of Dallas (current motto, "the Catholic University for Independent Thinkers"). . Her PhD is in government from Claremont Graduate School. One of her previous positions was as a senior director at the Family Research Council, a Christian conservative think tank.

Of course, fertility is not a disease. Neither is pregnancy, but we manage to cover that with insurance. Etc.

More at the Reproductive Health Reality Check.

Comments

[John]

I'm sure Susan Orr will continue the Bush tradition of doing the opposite of what a government agency is intended to do. She sounds like a successor worthy of Eric Keroack.

[birdchaser]

Traffic accidents are not diseases either--so I suppose health insurance for federal employees shouldn't have to cover traffic accidents, and other accidents, as well. We just need to teach federal employees to be safer--to abstain from risky behavior such as driving, climbing ladders, walking outside, or taking showers.

[Diane]

The State of Illinois health insurance plan until just recently did not cover birth control. The logic behind this baffles me. Insurance companies should be flinging birth control at its insurees by the handful, because what is more expensive than having to provide coverage for a whole new human being?

Infertility is also (often) not a disease, but I would imagine she supports insurance paying for fertility treatments.

[Phantom Midge]

Actually, you can make the case for fertility causing a disease...I had huge, painful ovarian cysts which would form unless I was taking birth control pills to suppress them. It was quite a fight to get my Catholic university employer to cover the prescription, but it was either that or remove the ovaries.