My wife, the syndicated San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders, has a splendid column out today about the Anti Liberty Obama Free Birth Control Rule imposition. She makes a few points I have not made here, so let’s take a look.
First, she notes that the Obama imposition is different from state mandates because there is “no escape.” From “Obama Imposes Will in Contraception Compromise:”
In 1996, San Francisco effectively forced Catholic Charities to offer domestic-partner benefits for same-sex couples (without calling them domestic-partner benefits) in order to receive city funds to care for the sick. A 1999 law made California one of 28 states that now require employers to include contraception in health-care plans that cover prescriptions. Yet the Obama administration boldly went where no state (not even California) had gone before when it announced that, under the Affordable Care Act, all employers must provide birth control as part of their health-care insurance packages. Churches would be exempt, but Catholic hospitals, universities and religious-based charities would not.
States have legal loopholes. In California, for example, a religious-affiliated institution can get around the mandate by self-insuring or not offering prescription-drug coverage. The only way out of the Obamacare mandate is to move to another country. Otherwise, there’s no exit.
Exactly right. So much for diversity, tolerance for differences, and forging middle grounds–in other words, and not for the first time–the entire premise of the president’s mendacious 2008 campaign.
This compromise is just word engineering. The religious organization still has to pay for the policy, the price for which will have already built in the cost of contraception, surgical sterilization, and abortifacient coverage. Moreover, Obamacarians are lying that the issue is about heterodox thinking organizations trying to “deny acess” to women who want contraceptives. That is Newspeak right out of the Ministry of Love from 1984 (my assertion) As Debra notes:
For its part, the administration keeps stretching the English language to the brink. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services frames the issue as one of “access” to “preventive health-care services.” “Access” no longer means being able to obtain something. “Access” now means being able to get something for free and making someone else – even someone who objects on moral grounds – pay for it, Supporters claim the mandate is no big deal because 90 percent of Catholics practice birth control in violation of church doctrine. That tells me that there never was an access problem.
Right on, Debra. The morning after pill is even available over the counter to adults, not to mention condoms can be purchased in any grocery store. Not only that, prescribed BC is readily available through community clinics, Planned Parenthood–and high schools.
But see, Obamacare isn’t really about health care, health insurance, or contraception. Beneath those pretexts the president is pushing an anti Liberty campaign. As I noted in The Corner:
This episode has confirmed my suspicion that seizing power for the bureaucracy was the primary point of Obamacare — even beyond expanding access to health insurance. Such centralized control gives the government the weapons and the pretexts — increasing efficiency in the provision of health care and promoting “wellness” — to smash the principles of limited government and transform us into a bureaucratic state. In other words, the U.S. is on a course that will turn Washington, D.C., into Brussels. Just wait until the cost-benefit boards and the Independent Payment Advisory Board come on line. Then we will see what bureaucratic power really looks like!
That’s what is going on. The question is whether Americans still believe in limited government or want to exchange freedom and its attendant risks for an entitlement state. It seems to me that the jury is still out on that one.
By the way, the wording of the actual rule was not changed. The “compromise” is merely a promise contained in a non binding preface that the administration plans to amend the actual rule later through the usual rule making bureaucratic process. If Obama wins reelection with a Democratic Congress, that is a change that will never come.
February 14th, 2012 | 6:10 pm
The morning after pill is even available over the counter to adults
It’s also becoming available in vending machines.
February 14th, 2012 | 7:15 pm
There are so many fallacies in this, I’m not sure where to start.
1. One cannot claim that there was no problem with access if 90% are using it. Just because one obtains something, does not mean they had no problem accessing it.
2. So what if 90% of Catholics use birth control? 100% of Catholics do not work for the church. Claims about access are mute. Just because 90% of Catholics obtained birth control, does not mean obtaining birth control will be trivial for those working in religious institutions. This is a fallacy of composition.
3. Comments regarding condoms are a red herring. Insurance typically does not cover the purchase of jimmy hats in drugstores. Access is not controlled through a licensed profession. Point is entirely moot, and very bizarre.
4. Birth control is not free. My insurance pays for it, yet I don’t use it. My insurance also pays for the sick infants or preemies born as a result of failed birth control, or lack of birth control. It is far cheaper to insert an IUD than pay for a preemie. Why do you think insurance providers are thrilled to provide birth control and sterilizations??? Why are they delighted in the “compromise”? (hmm, I thought Obama was anti-business?) Birth control is not cheap, yet it is cheaper than the alternative.
5. Someone else paying for it? Ridiculous. Do you understand what insurance is, or how it works?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 14th, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Why not have insurance pay for condoms too by bureaucratic fiat? Now that the government can order us to buy services whether we want to or not, order religious organizations to cooperate in matters that they oppose theologically in contravention of First Amendment’s free exercise clause, they can do almost anything in the name of cutting health care costs or promoting wellness. There is no RIGHT to birth control. Under Griswald and its progeny, the government can’t prevent access to birth control. That’s not the same thing at all. This is the end of limited government. You’ll care, David, when your own ox is gored. Mine isn’t gored by this regulation, but my beief in American liberty is gored. And so is yours, except you only care about outcomes with which you agree. Not liberty. Not tolerance. Not diversity. And you certainly don’t care about the U.S. Constitution.
pentamom Reply:
February 14th, 2012 at 7:37 pm
@David, #2 would be a fallacy of composition if the entire argument rested on “90% of Catholics use birth control, therefore it can’t be hard to access.”
But when you incorporate the reality that birth control *is not hard to access* especially among the group of people who have household employment income plus medical coverage for other things, the point stands.
It’s a buried premise that “we already know that it’s not that hard for non-indigent adults to access birth control,” but it’s an important one.
pauld Reply:
February 14th, 2012 at 9:33 pm
@David, david: Do you honestly think that access to birth control is a problem for anyone in the US, even those without any insurance? Do you live in a different country?
As to your point 4, even if all you say is true, when has saving money trumped aConstitonal right.
February 14th, 2012 | 9:19 pm
I find the silence of the old guard civil libertarians to be curious. Back in the 60′s and 70′s, the Bill of Rights was almost a sacred text to liberals. I remember when a neo-nazi group represented by the ACLU obtained a court order allowing them to march through Skokie, Illinois, a largely Jewish community with many holocaust survivors. Those who were appalled by the prospect of the Nazi march were given earnest lectures about the impotance of protecting all speech, even speech we might think is abhorent.
So what happened to the old left’s fidelity to the Bill of Rights.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 15th, 2012 at 1:47 am
They like power better.
holyterror Reply:
February 15th, 2012 at 9:40 am
@Wesley J. Smith, In my opinion, that tends to happen when you get older and are facing the prospect of death. Your real values start to show.
The younger generation of “liberals” does not tend to be so, in my experience. They are definitely more like ideologues– which is why, I might add, I was very reluctant to vote for Obama last time, even though I am a Democrat and was initially excited about what seemed to be a *smart* politician running for prez. I even lost a 10-year friendship over expressing my misgivings, at the time I felt that his speeches on Education revealed that he was not as progressive as he appeared, and was willing to speak (and therefore act) in destructive and conservative terms in order to get elected. Just a few short weeks ago his signing up with a SuperPAC gave another inkling of his craven hypocrisy.
And of course, now this.
Oh well. In this case, I hate being right.
February 15th, 2012 | 1:41 pm
Why not have insurance pay for condoms too by bureaucratic fiat?
I’d make a joke about how nutrition is linked to health so therefore the govt should provide all our food, but it isn’t funny – since they are moving toward doing exactly that.
“Hope & Change” turns out to be nothing short of replacing freedoms for promises – they will provide everything we want or need or deserve, if only we submit passively (or better yet eagerly).
Today’s young people – and quite a few older people – are not quite bright enough to figure out that once they’ve got you, there’s nothing at all to make them deliver on all those bright shiny promises – at least not the way you expect.
Poor old Boxer.
February 18th, 2012 | 3:12 am
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