What Compromise? This Policy Leaves Religious Liberty in Peril and Planned Parenthood Smiling

(I’m reposting this on this new thread because it also fits here.)

Pretty good editorial today in the Wall Street Journal.  It starts with a good title: “Immaculate Contraception” and ends with this question:

Who was it again who claimed that if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan?

This “accomodation” by King Barak and Commissar Sebelius is nothing more than a transparent fig leaf.

Two key points:

1.  ... the President’s 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 President’s remarks today do nothing of substance to alleviate this crisis.

2.  ...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 first point illustrates Obama’s complete and utter contempt for fundamental rights, the constitution and the system of limited government that the Founders created.  This president is a direct enemy to the Constitution he has sworn to uphold.  I might add that he is fully representative of the Democratic party that put him into power.

As to the second he is the sworn enemy of life and a full and willing participant in the culture of death.

Al Mohler is of course correct. The President’s so called compromise just shifts things over to the insurance company’s books. It changes nothing as regards to the fundamental issue involved.

I guess the good news here is that it took the public less than 24 hours to figure out that the President’s “accommodation” was nothing more than an accounting gimmick. 

Readers might be interested in another open letter signed by the President of Catholic University and a number of other scholars pointing out the moral bankruptcy of the Administration’s new rule.

#4 That’s a very strong letter.

This issue is not going to go away—and the effort to “accomodate” is being seen for the phony gimmick that it is.

There is also a brief but good article in Politico entitled
Bishops call Obama’s contraception compromise ‘unacceptable’ this morning.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72751.html

Franky, I found he “compromise” as insulting to the intelligence of a rational person as the original position.

slcath, I love that letter! Thanks for the link. It sure doesn’t pull any punches, and it’s written from a lawyer’s perspective. I was surprised to see Harvard and Princeton anong the schools represented. The fact that it’s on Notre Damer letterhead, and has a number of signers from ND, Pleases me very much. My son graduated from ND 1n 1998, and I wasn’t too happy with them when they had Obama there.

I was surprised to see Harvard and Princeton anong the schools represented.

Robert George (Princeton) is one of the drafters of the Manhattan Declaration and a solid conservative evangelical. 

Mary Ann Glendon is a Professor at Harvard Law School who has long been a very strong pro-life voice.  She was my classmate (a year behind me) at U of Chicago Law School— a brilliant student and member of the Law Review.

I believe MAry Ann Glendon refused to appear at the Notre Dame graduation at which Obama was honored, if I remember correclty.

Actually, the original rule has now gone into effect.  The president’s so called compromise will require a brand new rule and it will most likely take over a year before it could actually go into effect.

Here is a <a >write-up on the HHS mandate rules that will be published on February 15 in the Federal Register</a>. Once published, these rules will go into effect 60 days later. Obama’s “compromise” is no compromise at all.

Okay, let’s try again—the link is here.

On this general topic, there is a most excellent article over at the National Review by George Weigel titled The Libertine Police State.  In it, he links the gay agenda, contraception mandate and the Komen decision, showing that all are part of the same agenda.  I give you an excerpt:

...On numerous occasions, the secretary of state has declined to speak of “religious freedom,” but has referred to “freedom of worship.” Thus religious freedom is rendered a kind of privacy right that can be upheld so long as what happens religiously takes place out of the public square….

But to make matters worse, Secretary Clinton and the administration have linked this dumbing-down of religious freedom to their ramping-up of what they frankly call the “LGBT agenda” as a priority concern of U.S. international human-rights policy. On the one hand, religious freedom is hollowed out, abroad and at home. On the other hand, the LGBT agenda — the logical endgame of the sexual revolution’s gnosticism and antinomianism — is given priority in the human-rights agenda of the U.S. government around the world, while other planks in the libertine platform are imposed by coercive state power at home. Leviathan is nothing if not consistent.

Then there are the sexual revolution’s cultural impacts. At the risk of salaciousness, go back to that scruffy Dutchman’s claim in 1994, ponder it a moment — and then see if it doesn’t become piercingly obvious that there is a direct line of connection between that vulgarity and the implicit claim in much of the Komen/Planned Parenthood and HHS-mandate brawls: namely, that the transmission of human life is a disease to be “prevented.” Which, of course, means that children are not the fruit of love and a precious gift to be received with gratitude, but another lifestyle choice to be indulged at the whim of the imperial autonomous Self.

Where this is all leading is not pleasant to contemplate…

I think that what is clear is that some Serious Evil is behind this.