The Obama administration strategy is consistently to confuse people. That is how the bill we had to pass to find out what was in it came to be law.
First the president, using Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi well, insisted the Obama health-care revolution had nothing to do with abortion. Ultimately, as you know, they got Bart Stupak and other pro-life Democrats to buy into his health-care monstrosity by pretending that an executive order would fix the problem it had been insisting for months the bill didn’t have. Today he is consistent in that strategy.
The head of Democrats for Life was just on MSNBC and was already warm to the “accommodation” on the HHS mandate. She, of course, was also among those who helped put Obamacare over the top. Sr. Carol Keehan, who played a key role getting the bill passed, is back in the Obama fold, “pleased” with the “accommodation.” She has blessed the faux compromise — which White House surrogates and allies are making clear is no retreat — right alongside Planned Parenthood, which was instrumental in its conception.
There will be a lot of confusion. But don’t be confused, and don’t let people around you be confused. These last days have been instructive. As Rick Santorum just said: This is “about government control of your lives and it’s got to stop.” As Cardinal Wuerl put it this morning: This is about “basic freedom.” As Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez said the other day in a column: This new mandate moves us closer to what Pope Benedict XVI warned against in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (“God is Love”): “The state which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself . . [is]. a state which regulates and controls everything.”
Religious liberty is not an “accommodation.” This fight is not over today. It has only just begun.