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Posted on 02/21/2012 6:29:14 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The Washington Post headlines a piece by Ann Gerhart with the question, “Birth control as an election issue? Why?” It’s the wrong question, but first let’s see how Gerhart sets this up:
Decades ago, near the end of the Age of Aquarius, a Republican congressman from Texas argued passionately that the federal government should pay for birth control for poor women.
“We need to take sensationalism out of this topic so that it can no longer be used by militants who have no real knowledge of the voluntary nature of the program but, rather, are using it as a political stepping stone,” said George H.W. Bush. “If family planning is anything, it is a public health matter.”
Title X, the law he sponsored that still funds family planning for the poor, passed the House by a vote of 298 to 32. It passed the Senate unanimously. A Republican president, Richard Nixon, enthusiastically signed it.
That was 1970.
This is now: The issue of birth control has suddenly become an obsession of the 2012 presidential campaign. To many observers, it seems that the clock has indeed been turned back.
This, however true historically, is a false equivalence to the issue today. No one disputes the fact that government can spend tax money as Congress authorizes. No one today is arguing to end Title X or to ban or restrict the use of contraception at the federal or state level. In fact, the people who raised this issue want to maintain the status quo, not change it.
The real issue today is whether employers — any employers — should be forced by the federal government to supply contraception for free. Under what authority does the federal government have that power, and for what purpose? As I wrote earlier this month, this is a cure in search of a disease:
Employers still have to provide coverage — at no cost, not even copays — for contraception and abortifacients such as “ella” and Plan B, as well as IUDs. Here’s a question few are asking: Why? Obama and his administration insist that women need better access to contraception and abortifacients, but few women have problems accessing them. The CDC reported in 2009 that contraception use wasn’t exactly lacking: “Contraceptive use in the United States is virtually universal among women of reproductive age: 99 percent of all women who had ever had intercourse had used at least one contraceptive method in their lifetime.” Of all the reasons for non-use of contraception in cases of unwanted pregnancy, lack of access doesn’t even make the CDC’s list; almost half of women assumed they couldn’t get pregnant (44 percent), didn’t mind getting pregnant (23 percent), didn’t plan to have sex (14 percent), or worried about the side effects of birth control (16 percent). In fact, the word access appears only once in this study of contraceptive use, and only in the context of health insurance, not contraception.
So Title X has succeeded in its original policy goals. Access to contraception is so irrelevant to unwanted pregnancies that the CDC doesn’t even mention it as an issue in a report specifically about contraception. There is no reason for employers of any kind to be forced to supply contraception for free to their employees. There is even less reason to force religious organizations to violate their own doctrines to facilitate access to and supply contraception to their employees. The employees can get their own contraception, as they do now.
Finally, the federal government should not have the power to force employers to provide contraception or anything else for free. Today it’s contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients. What will it be tomorrow? Abortions? Sex-change operations? Housing? Company stores? Don’t believe for one moment that this arrogance ends at the string of an IUD. That’s why this is a fight worth having, and why it is incumbent on us to rebuke the media for getting it very, very wrong at every turn.
Its actually a couple of major issues with birth control being the catalyst.
No, birth control isn’t an election issue (Don’t lose sight: The issue is FREEDOM)
_________________________________________________________+
Amen! And the free EXERCISE of religion.
PS I wonder if these exceedingly ignorant leftists ever even considered what might happen if the Church shut down all her hospitals, schools and charitable organizations? Where would all those people (those who work there and those who need the services) go?
As has been the case in many settings, communists are cunning. Look at what they’ve done, with a complicit media: Gas prices up and going higher, and this can be pinned directly to the Obama administration. Unemployment high, with little hope for recovery. A trashed housing market. Iran going nuclear, in spite of a good talking to by the one.
So what’s on the news daily? Contraception.
And what is the simplification of the debate? Because most Americans are simpletons who can’t go beyond basic headlines. “Republicans against contraceptives!”
This is genius. Obviously, if the media weren’t so biased, this ploy wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Access to contraception is so irrelevant to unwanted pregnancies that the CDC doesn’t even mention it as an issue in a report specifically about contraception.”
She’s right on all counts, of course, but this bit is just mind-blowing.
“PS I wonder if these exceedingly ignorant leftists ever even considered what might happen if the Church shut down all her hospitals, schools and charitable organizations? Where would all those people (those who work there and those who need the services) go?”
It would be the left’s nirvana. They could blame the Church for inadequate services. It would give them reason, and popular backing to destroy the Church, meanwhile, it would drive people to the government as the sole source of filling their needs.
First contraception was available.
Then it was free.
Then it became mandatory.
——It would be the left’s nirvana. They could blame the Church for inadequate services. It would give them reason, and popular backing to destroy the Church, meanwhile, it would drive people to the government as the sole source of filling their needs.——
There’s no doubt in my mind that this is his plan.
Obama is an ignoramus, with one exception. He is a master of subversion. It’s what he’s been trained to do.
He will eventually discover that it’s easier to destroy than to build.
Most leftists believe, and are indoctrinated further into believing through “higher education”,
that churches performing services such as you listed
are “usurping the role of government”.
It has been a successful theme. Recall when Clinton was up for Perjury and Obstruction of Justice, the media spun the issue as "all about sex".
They have done this before.
The seminal issue, however is not just contraception vs Catholic Doctrine, but the "Plan B" abortifactents.
It isn't "sex", it's murder.
Speaking of less freedom.
I wonder how many ‘less freedom laws’ have been passed since 0 got in?
Some are obvious but what about the not so obvious ones that have been slipped in under o’s radar.
They are “redirecting”, or “reframing” the argument, as they’ve been taught in “advancing the agenda 101”.
They conflate the abortion pill with “contraceptives”,
say the republicans want to outlaw contraceptives,
and you mindless screwers won’t be able to mindlessly screw anymore.
And THAT gets them all upset.
Could someone post a picture of G’Kar (Babylon 5) saying “For Freedom!” ?
funny how the media was not this incensed over birth control back when Clinton’s FDA pulled the Today Sponge from the market.
First contraception was available.
Then it was free.
Then it became mandatory.
Bingo and you hit the nail on the head. And you will eat what is mandatory, and you will drive(bicycle or walk or commuter train) what is mandatory, and you will give mandatory homage to Dear Leader. Welcome to not the USA but to North Korea.
For on thing, Obama wants control of the hospitals now run by the Catholic Church. If he can drive the Church out of the field, then he has total control of health care and can push his social agenda forward without the impediment of Catholic morals.
Obama is a true-believer, but like Goebbels,Hitler’s propoganda minister, he masks his fanaticism is smooth talk. Now this may not be how people think about Goebbels, but aside from a few speeches in which he let it all rip, if you actually go back and read his stuff, he actually sounds reasonable in the way he presents issues.
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