Posted on 02/11/2012 11:56:50 AM PST by Steelfish
FEBRUARY 11, 2012 Immaculate Contraception An 'accommodation' that makes the birth-control mandate worse.
Here's a conundrum: The White House wants to impose its birth-control ideology on all Americans, including those for whom sponsoring or subsidizing such services violates their moral conscience. The White House also wants to avoid a political backlash from this blow to religious freedom. These goals are irreconcilable.
So you almost have to admire the absurdity of the new plan President Obama floated yesterday: The government will now write a rule that says the best things in life are "free," including contraception. Thus a political mandate will be compounded by an uneconomic one—in other words, behold the soul of ObamaCare.
Under the original Health and Human Services regulation, all religious institutions except for houses of worship would be required to cover birth control, including hospitals, schools and charities. Under the new rule, which the White House stresses is "an accommodation" and not a compromise, nonprofit religious organizations won't have to directly cover birth control and can opt out. But the insurers they hire to cover their employees can't opt out. If that sounds like a distinction without a difference, odds are you're a rational person.
Say Notre Dame decides that its health plan won't cover birth control on moral grounds. A faculty member wants such coverage, so Notre Dame's insurer will then be required to offer the benefit as an add-on rider anyway, at no out-of-pocket cost to her, or to any other worker or in higher premiums for the larger group.
But wait. Supposedly the original rule was necessary to ensure "access" to contraceptives, which can cost up to $600 a year as Democratic Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray wrote in these pages this week. ......
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
This is exactly where the argument of the Catholic bishops completely falls apart. What gives Notre Dame any more standing to refuse to cover birth control than any Catholic employer -- or ANY employer, for that matter?
The basis of the argument against ObamaCare should never be tied to some lame "religious exemption" argument -- especially when a religious institution large business like Notre Dame is used to make the point. As a signatory of the Land O' Lakes Statement on the Nature of the Contemporary Catholic University in 1967, Notre Dame basically repudiated its Catholic identity anyway . . . so any claim it makes today that it should be subject to any kind of "religious exemption" is nothing more than hypocrisy and fraud.
Since the indisputable goal of this ruling is to force the public at large to be the financiers of recreational sex, why is the administration being intolerant and sexist about it?
Shouldn’t men be receiving free Cialis and Viagra? What about boxes of free condoms?
Shouldn’t some mens group be filing an equal protection suit?
I’d still like to know why my health plan will include free birth control but not free chocolate. It is essential to my well-bean. Why, without chocolate, birth control will not even come up in the conversation. If any.
Obama wants non-Catholics to think nothing affecting them is at stake. He already has the secularists and the feminists on his side. Among those who didn't vote for him in 2008 are a lot of people who have a negative attitude towards the Catholic Church.
To fire up the base. Intolerant liberals and sexist feminists are a major part of his base.
My two overlarge (85 & 100 lb) dogs arecessential to my mental well being. Where’s my free dog food?
My two overlarge (85 & 100 lb) dogs arecessential to my mental well being. Where’s my free dog food?
Just buying time until the day that there is a single payor.
The basic, fundamental error is in the title, and in the “argument.” The meaning of the word CONTRACEPTION is to PREVENT CONCEPTION. Once conception has taken place, and an abortion is perpetrated, whether by instrument or by chemical means, that is not contraception; it is MURDER.
Read the latest statements from the bishops. They are taking the tack now that *everyone* should be exempt.
The Bishops are not just arguing for a religious exemption, they’re arguing against the mandate, as well.
Actually if you look at the USCCB statement issued yesterday, it basically agrees with you. It says that any employer who objects on moral grounds to providing contraception, etc., ought to be able to opt out.
which makes for great propaganda.
o freaking YAWN. They were snoozing when they might have done something about it.
I'm just glad they realized their mistake while there was still time to do something about it.
What makes you think there is time to do something about it?
Has the Presidential election happened yet? Have the Congressional elections happened yet? No? Then there is time for citizens to make their decision on whether they like this, or not, and the man who is pushing it.
obamacare is LAW. You, I, and every other citizen else are legally compelled to obey it or face penalties.
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