Last weekend, Vice President Joe Biden appeared in a televised interview on “Face the Nation.” Something he said both startled me and got me thinking. What, exactly, has President Obama’s intention been all along concerning contraception and abortion in the national health care plan? I don’t have answers, but I do have questions.
To begin with, we all remember that the first version of the contraception mandate would have required all employers to actually pay for and provide contraception – including some chemical abortion pills – to their employees. Religious beliefs didn’t matter. Personal standards never entered the equation. Birth control was exalted as the supreme standard of our nation, above both religious and personal convictions.
Vice President Joe Biden. Photo Credit: Richiec on Flickr.
Did you wonder, with me, why President Obama would even try to impose such an unconstitutional standard? Most people who have attempted to study the First Amendment at any length could see how this original standard was a violation of the freedom of religion.
But then, instead of putting up a fight, President Obama seemed to relent, allowing the burden to fall away from employers and onto insurance companies. This standard is hardly better. The employers will still be paying for the same insurance that provides birth control – and some forms of chemical abortion – to their employees. Not to mention the fact that some owners of insurance companies will have their own religious objections that have not been taken into consideration by the Obama administration. Once again, birth control is the supreme standard. But the difference now is that many believe that the president is compromising; he’s giving in a little; he’s trying to be reasonable.
But that’s just the problem. Or, it’s just my question. Has this been Obama’s goal all along – to set such an extreme, unconstitutional standard to begin with that he is now able to set a still unconstitutional standard while the public believes he’s being reasonable? (Honestly, I have my doubts that many actually believe he’s being reasonable, but that’s another story.)
Put another way: if your goal is to get people to accept a certain standard that’s outside the mainstream, if you suggest a standard that’s about as far out there as Pluto (one that you don’t even fully believe in or think you’ll win on), and then, when objections are raised, you compromise and say that you only really want to go to Jupiter, voilà: people think you’re a reasonable compromiser; you listen to them; you must actually care. Read more about why Obama’s compromise isn’t really a compromise at all.
So, you may be wondering, what it was in Biden’s interview that started me thinking about the president’s true intentions in this whole debacle? Well, watch the video for yourself (only the first two minutes are relevant). At 0:46-51, Biden says, “The president ended up exactly where he intended, where he began.” At 1:12-14, he says, “That’s also where the president was at the front end,” speaking of making sure that religious employers had the right of conscience to not pay for contraception for their employees.
So, after you watch the video and hear Biden argue that Obama intended to be at the place of compromise at the beginning of this whole debate, tell me what you think is true:
OPTION #1: Biden is just using talking points. That’s what politicians do. He’s just covering for Obama’s true intentions and desires. Obama would love to have everyone pay for abortions if he had it his way. He doesn’t care about the right to conscience.
OPTION #2: Obama is pretty smart (or crafty, depending on how you view the situation). He knew he wouldn’t win what he really wanted unless he appeared too radical to being with. This provided him with the perfect opportunity to appear reasonable by compromising.
Now, in the end, despite my questions about Barack Obama’s true intentions, we still know several things:
1) Even with his “compromise,” Obama will be forcing religious employers and religious insurance companies to pay for contraception and some abortion. He’s just made it less obvious with his “compromise.”
2) Obama is clearly a very pro-abortion, radical president, having appointed Kathleen Sebelius as his HHS secretary and having voted against an Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, to name just a couple of things.
3) Vice President Biden is wrong and very “un-vice-presidential” to say that those of us who object to the contraception mandate in either version are “out of touch with reality” and that the fact that we’ve even begun this debate is “remarkable.”
4) The solution to this conundrum is for pro-lifers to analyze very closely whom we vote for in 2012.
As a final point – and rabbit trail – to those who would like to disagree with me simply based on the fact that you like birth control and you assume I’m against it: I am actually not against all birth control. Wow, can you believe it? Though some may have just experienced the shock of a lifetime, I know for a fact that many pro-lifers wholeheartedly agree with me.
Here’s what I stick to: any contraception/birth control that acts only to prevent a pregnancy is each couple’s own decision and private business. Any contraception/birth control that ends a life once it has begun (yes, this includes preventing implantation, since life begins at fertilization) is wrong. Pretty simple if you think about it. Preventing a life is 100% not the same as ending a life. For example, getting your dog spayed is not the same as killing her puppies once they are born. Right?
Basically, I believe that the members of every couple have the responsibility to do their own research and ensure that, if they use contraception, they use only a kind that prevents pregnancy. I don’t think whether I or anyone else uses this kind of contraception or never touches it is anyone else’s business. This, my friends, is what the right to privacy really means.
