Posted on 02/10/2012 5:32:20 PM PST by Gamecock
President Obama walked into the White House Press Room today and attempted to pull a political rabbit out of a hat. Faced with an avalanche of mounting opposition to his administrations mandate that religious employers provide birth control to all employees, the President announced what his staff characterized as a compromise. Was it?
After his opening comments, the President stated his new policy:
Today, weve reached a decision on how to move forward. Under the rule, women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services - no matter where they work. So that core principle remains. But if a womans employer is a charity or a hospital that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company - not the hospital, not the charity - will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge, without co-pays and without hassles.
The result will be that religious organizations wont have to pay for these services, and no religious institution will have to provide these services directly. Let me repeat: These employers will not have to pay for, or provide, contraceptive services. But women who work at these institutions will have access to free contraceptive services, just like other women, and theyll no longer have to pay hundreds of dollars a year that could go towards paying the rent or buying groceries.
This means that certain employers who have a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan will not fund these services directly. Instead, the insurance plan will cover these services without charge to all women employees.
What does this resolve? Well, to state the matter bluntly, nothing. At the end of the day, this compromise will resolve the issue only for those whose conscience can be resolved by an accounting maneuver.
The qualified insurance plans do not print the monies required to cover the birth control services mandated by the Administration. They will obtain these funds through the premiums paid by employers including those employers with a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan.
Will this resolve the issue politically? That remains to be seen. As is often the case, what is presented in Washington as a compromise is really not a compromise in any meaningful sense at all. The very fact that groups like Planned Parenthood celebrated the compromise indicates that it was not a compromise at all just an accounting trick.
There were several very interesting aspects of the Presidents remarks that should draw close attention.
First, President Obama said that he had earlier promised that we would spend the next year working with institutions like Catholic hospitals and Catholic universities to find an equitable solution that protects religious liberty and ensures that every woman has access to the care that she needs.
Interestingly, that is not at all what Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said in her January 20 statement:
Nonprofit employers who, based on religious beliefs, do not currently provide contraceptive coverage in their insurance plan, will be provided an additional year, until August 1, 2013, to comply with the new law. Employers wishing to take advantage of the additional year must certify that they qualify for the delayed implementation. This additional year will allow these organizations more time and flexibility to adapt to this new rule.
The Secretary ended that portion of her remarks with a final sentence, in which she stated that her department would continue to work closely with religious groups during this transitional period to discuss their concerns. Secretary Sebelius left no door open for a change in the policy, only a listening ear and more time and flexibility to adapt to this new rule. That is a far cry from what the President described today.
Second, the President steadfastly describes this controversy as a Catholic issue, and this is to his political advantage. He spoke of meeting with Catholic leaders and working with Catholic parishes and Catholic hospitals and Catholic universities. He never even mentioned any other church, denomination, or religious group.
The President wants to frame this as a Catholic issue, but it is not. The Roman Catholic Church is the major religious body that maintains teaching against all forms of artificial birth control, but those moral concerns are not limited to the Catholic Church. The mandated coverage would violate the conscience and deepest convictions of millions of American evangelical Christians and their hundreds of schools and institutions which, put together, outnumber Catholic institutions.
Third, the Obama Administration continues to frame the controversy as a concern about contraception. Millions of Americans naturally think of a contraceptive as a mechanism for preventing the fertilization of the womans egg. They are unaware that the word has been redefined in medical, pharmacological, and political contexts to refer to a mechanism for preventing either fertilization or the successful attachment of the fertilized egg to the uterine wall.
This is not merely a matter of semantics. Any intervention that prevents the fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine lining is an abortion. The Obama Administration has mandated the inclusion of the so-called morning after pill and other forms of emergency contraception in qualified plans.
Thus, only an accounting maneuver hides the fact that we will all be paying for chemical abortions under the Presidents prized Affordable Care Act. Added to this is coverage for sterilizations.
Fourth, the Presidents remarks today do nothing in the least to save the health care plans governed by religious groups. These include those smaller groups that self-cover their employee medical expenses and massive denominational insurance plans that cover hundreds of thousands of ministers, religious workers, and employees of church-related institutions. The current mandates threaten to kill one of the most effective and efficient means of covering the health care needs of millions of Americans.
Fifth, the Presidents remarks today betrayed a fundamental problem that lies at the heart of this controversy and his own thinking. He clearly sees the controversy as a matter of balancing a policy goal, on the one hand, and religious liberty, on the other. He even spoke of religious liberty as an inalienable right that is enshrined in our Constitution.
But, just to state the obvious, a policy goal and an inalienable right are not to be balanced. A matter of policy, no matter how urgent or important, must be reconciled to an inalienable right. This does not mean that such reconciliations are easy nor that every claim of religious liberty is legitimate. Nevertheless, this controversy concerns the deepest convictions held by millions of Americans, and these convictions are rooted in over two thousand years of religious teaching. The Presidents remarks today do nothing of substance to alleviate this crisis.
Lastly, this controversy exposes the most fundamental problem with the inclusion of birth control in the Affordable Care Act, and this problem is not limited to any single government policy. This problem is endemic to our culture. Clearly, the President and his Administration are not alone in defining birth control as a form of preventive care, putting the prevention of pregnancy on par with an inoculation against disease. That is the greatest outrage.
The Presidents inclusion of birth control as a form of preventive care also explains why Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards was so pleased with President Obamas remarks today. She said: Planned Parenthoods priority is increasing access to preventive health care. This birth control coverage benefit does just that.
So preventing the birth of a child is classified with the polio vaccine. As Cecile Richards declared, the Obama Administrations policy does just that.
Anyone who celebrates this compromise as a victory is hiding behind an accounting trick. That accounting trick cannot hide the great moral tragedy at the heart of the Presidents policy a policy that leaves religious liberty in peril and Planned Parenthood smiling.
Pray that more and more people will see Obama for what he is. Sin makes people stupid. It took a lot of sinning to make America stupid enough to elect Obama. It will take a lot of grace to turn from the road we're currently on, which leads to something a lot like Soviet Russia. This election may be our last chance.
Go to Kirsten Gillibrand’s facebook page and look at the morons who think this is a great achievement for “women’s health”
You can’t even begin to reason with them.
Paris Hilton and the Kardashian sisters can now “have access” to “free” preventative care!
Phew!!!
Because...up until now, it seems, wealthy women everywhere just didn’t “have access”!!!
Hoooray for women’s health!!! /s
The problem is not just the HHS mandate for fertility-toxic and baby-toxic drugs to be funded by religious organizations, which is brutally offensive in itself.
But even worse is that any, each, and all of us are being forced in exactly the way Connie Sulkowski who runs a real estate office, and Tony Rios who owns a couple of restaurants, and Chuck Schmidt who employs a workforce of 50 in his printing plant. They should not be forced to purchase insurance plans which subsidize an objective near occasion of sin for employees.
The fact is that every person legally resident in America (with a few sharia compliant exceptions) will be required, like it or not, to purchase insurance policies which cover goods and services which are abhorrent to a sound conscience. To cover them 100% without co-pay. And we will have no alternative except coercive penalties (huge fines)and, if it comes to that, imprisonment.
The underlying issue isnt even birth control. Its Total control --- Total State Control --- of our bodies and our souls.p Its not just the separation of Church and State. Its the separation of real moral choice from real life.
Obamacare is totalitarian, and it has to go. The whole thing. That is what the bishops and pastors, Catholics and Baptists, and everybody else with a brain in their head and a spine in their back, should be saying.
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