As you may have already heard, President Obama is expected to announce a “compromise” regarding the contraception mandate. From everything I’ve heard and read, this is no compromise, but another way of forcing Catholic institutions into providing coverage for services they find inherently evil.

As the mandate currently stands, employers would be required to cover all “FDA approved” methods of sterilization and contraception including those methods that can act as an abortifacient. While a very narrow exemption exists (Archbishop Dolan says that Jesus and his disciples wouldn’t qualify) for religious groups, most have recognized this mandate for the attack on religious liberty that it is.

The proposed accommodation does not change anything. It will still require employers to provide for these services, just not directly if they have an “objection.” Employers will still be required to have their respective insurers offer these services to women. Yuval Levin, from National Review states it this way:

The only difference is that the access to those contraceptive and abortifacient drugs would not technically be listed as one of the benefits the employer was paying for directly but would be listed as a benefit the insurer was paying for (with the money the employer paid for the broader insurance policy, of course).

President Obama is clearly placating his base of ardent feminists who recently flexed their collective muscle against the Komen Foundation. Komen made the decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood stating that it had decided giving money to organizations under Congressional investigation was not ideal. It also noted that it would rather fund groups in the business of directly providing breast care. PP does not, despite Cecile Richards claims to the contrary. Once PP and NARAL got done with their attacks on Komen (e.g. hijacking Komen’s website, spamming the Facebook page, and vilifying it in the press), the breast cancer foundation apologized and appeared to be reconsidering its initial decision. That’s politics, Chicago-style, as they say.

All I need to know about this “accommodation” is that Planned Parenthood supports it. The aforementioned Richards released the following:

“In the face of a misleading and outrageous assault on women’s health, the Obama administration has reaffirmed its commitment to ensuring all women will have access to birth control coverage, with no costly co-pays, no additional hurdles, and no matter where they work.

“We believe the compliance mechanism does not compromise a woman’s ability to access these critical birth control benefits.

I’d say it’s analagous to the Executive Order compromise offered in the final days of Obamacare. I hope Catholics won’t get fooled again.

Tags: Abortion, Politics

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2012 at 1:21 PM . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.