Jonah is right, of course, that there are neither free lunches nor free abortifacients, and that it is infuriating to have our intelligence insulted by the Left’s incessant claims about “free” medical coverage. But I want to focus on a different aspect of cost because, as I’ve said any number of times over the years, once you lose the language battle, the substantive policy defeat is sure to follow. In the debate over the mandate, we are losing the language battle in two critical areas.
First, the Left is getting away with saying that religious organizations want to deny coverage for birth control. That is sheer idiocy. As I contended in last weekend’s column, contraceptives and abortifacients are cheap, cheap, cheap in this country. If there were enough months in the year, you could have two second-trimester abortions for less than I spend on pizza — to say nothing of flat-screen TVs, iPods, X-boxes and the scores of other extravagances that the “poor” in America manage to score without government mandates. What we are talking about here is not walling people off from birth-control — condoms will still be free in New York City, the pill will still set you back less than $4 per week, and so on. The issue is whether people who have moral objections to abortion and contraception should be extorted by state power into paying for other people’s abortions and contraceptives. But that hardly means the latter will be denied.
Second, how dare the administration propose compromises and safe-harbors for “religious organizations”? I imagine they dare because the usual useful idiots (see, e.g., Michael Gerson, cited in Ramesh’s post Tuesday) are, as ever, warning conservatives not to “overreach” — this time, for exemptions that extend beyond corporate religious entities. The Bill of Rights, however, protects individual liberty from abusive government action. The First Amendment does not merely protect the religious liberty of groups of people who formally organize as a religious enterprise. It protects the individual believer, who has as much right as the Archdiocese of New York to resist government compulsion that violates his conscience. Under the Left’s First Amendment, we’re supposed to be deferential to every Saudi alien Islamic supremacist whack-job who wants to replace the Constitution with sharia, but an American citizen who personally objects to abortifacients should pipe down and pay up unless he’s the CEO of Catholic Charities? I don’t think so.
There is no denial of birth control: Birth control will be readily accessible at cheap prices for anyone who wants it, and the issue is not religious organizations but individual liberty — a matter on which there can be no compromise consistent with the Constitution. When it comes to “constitutional” rights that progressive judges have invented out of whole cloth, Leftists never compromise. Why should we be goaded into a compromise regarding rights that are expressly, undeniably part of the social compact?
You are correct in saying that we are losing the language battle, you yourself are giving up ground inadvertently in this post.
Here's the spot I am referring to:
"The First Amendment does not merely protect the religious liberty of groups of people who formally organize as a religious enterprise. It protects the individual believer, who has as much right as the Archdiocese of New York to resist government compulsion that violates his conscience."
The First Amendment does far more than that:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW...
The First Amendment goes far beyond merely protecting religious liberty, it explicitly forbids Congress from enacting laws which interfere with the free exercise of religion in the United States, and this mandate violates the ability of Catholics in the United States from freely exercising their religious beliefs on the issue of contraception and abortion by forcing them to finance both.
The important language in this battle is the precise text of the First Amendment to the Constitution, and THERE is where the real battle lies.
Congress "made" a law that interferes with the free exercise of the religious beliefs of American Catholics, and that in and of itself is blatantly unconstitutional.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMr. McCarthy writes: "The issue is whether people who have moral objections to abortion and contraception should be extorted by state power into paying for other people’s abortions and contraceptives."
This issue not that. The issue is larger than that. The issue is whether employers should have the freedom to design their own compensation packages to attract and retain the talent they need to succeed, or if that freedom should be stamped out by a government that will dictate to one and all precisely how they will consume health care services.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI suggest we modify the old economic/Heinlein acronym"TANSTAAFL" to include another A at the end for abortifacients.
TANSTAAFL/A.
Maybe that'll get the point across.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhere the pro-life side is playing straight into the hands of the pro-death Left is in their dishonest use of "abortifacients" with a fetishistic frequency that rivals the every-third-post bleating "Ponnuru for SCOTUS!" phase here at the Corner. The way lawyers like Mr. McCarthy and Hugh Hewitt sling the meme that the morning-after pill is an abortion pill (i.e. abortifacient! Say it over and over!) does great violence to the concept of intent.
When sex occurs, there are two possible results: pregnancy or not. If a woman doesn't wish to become pregnant - a view that I see a frightening amount of conservatives (mostly MEN) consider to be proof that she is a slattern and harlot indulging in recreational sex and thus in need of taming - she can take contraceptive measures (again, SINNER!), but sometimes accidents happen. The condom may break (serves her right for sinning against God!); she may've forgotten to take her Pill (again, WH*RE!!!); perhaps she got drunk and was date raped (SL*T!!!); and she's concerned about pregnancy and thus takes a morning-after pill which is basically a megaton of the hormones in contraceptives.
OK, so the promiscuous she-devil takes the pills and when her period comes to confirm she's not pregnant, life goes on. Where the extremist pro-lifers are revealing their vile anti-woman attitude is in calling the action to prevent pregnancy an abortion because it could prevent a fertilized ovum from implanting and fulfilling God's plan. Um, isn't abortion a choice made to eliminate a pregnancy that you know about beforehand?
If our theoretical drunken sorority tramp didn't take the pill - before or after - and didn't get pregnant, then what does that mean? That every sexual act doesn't result in a glorious baby being created? (If you're thinking of the beginning of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, good for you.) All Plan B does is stack the contraceptive deck; it's intended to prevent pregnancy, not induce abortion like RU-486 for a woman who knows she's pregnant. The way abortifacient is slung around indicates that the extreme pro-lifer view is that NOTHING should get in the way of every possible baby being created and if the demon woman doesn't wish to have her body conscripted for incubator duty, then she needs to have her access to baby-killing medicines as restricted as much as possible.
For whatever reasons a woman is taking the morning-after pill, it is 99.44% likely that she is trying to prevent a pregnancy, not end a pregnancy. It is irrelevant how the mechanics play out deep inside her womb with regard to a handful of cells. People trying to conceive have their fertilized ovum not implant and don't know it, so why the fatwa against women who have the same happen due to the ingestion of hormones?
As infuriating as it is to see liberal thugs like Slate's Amanda Marcotte crow about how Obama revealed that the whole religious practice argument was a fig leaf for wanting to disempower women, it's hard to rebut such smears when the conservative viewpoint sure sounds like the cartoon and they gleefully blurt "ABORTIFACIENTS!!!" over and over because it lends the impression that the morning-after pill is just a way for tramps to kill their babies.
Seriously, it's losing the argument because of the extreme need to be moral scolds.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThanks for saying this. I've been annoyed for a while now that the argument keeps being framed as over Catholic rights. Where does the government get off declaring that I must be a member of an organized religious group, and working on that religion's behalf in order to claim to have a conscience?
If I just want to run a pizza shop (or consultancy, or book store, or whatever) according to my own beliefs, I should be able to do that without having to worry about whether HHS approves my choices or not!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSpeaking of a language battle, consider "Planned Parenthood", a phrase that in America has becone synonymous with "abortion".
But let's deconstruct the phrase.name:
Planned (past tense of plan) - 1)To arrange the parts of (design) 2) To have in mind (intend)
Parenthood - The state of being a parent
So, Planned Parenthood should be in the business of helping couples DESIGN the best way to reach the goal they INTEND, which is to become parents. It seems to me that Planned Parenthood should be providing free contraceptives to couples not ready (emotionally, financially, whatever) to become parents. No need to involve government, insurers, or employers. Planned Parenthood certainly does not lack for funds to accomplish this; the cost of one abortion should pay for a year of contraceptives for dozens? hundreds? of women.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe controversy is another example of the Democrat party is the evil party and the GOP is the stupid party. The Dems play to win, by any means possible, while the Republicans (like the Chicago Cubs) play not to lose.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you wish to eat a bologna sandwich and I elect NOT to pay for it, am I DENYING you a bologna sandwich?
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