An acknowledged devotee of pop culture, President Obama recently took a few moments out of the State dinner for French President Hollande to ask another dinner guest, the chief of HBO for early copies of both "True Detective" and "Game of Thrones." But for real insight into contemporary politics in the Obama-era, we need to go back to "The Sting," the 1974 Academy Award winner for Best Picture.
This isn’t about women’s health care; it’s about using ObamaCare as a Trojan Horse, sneaking normalization of life-ending policies into American society.
Based on a book called "The Big Con," the intricate story of two confidence men could also loosely portray the deception involving the Health and Human Services contraceptive mandate, coming to the Supreme Court Tuesday.
This isn’t about women’s health care; it’s about using ObamaCare as a Trojan Horse, sneaking normalization of life-ending policies into American society.
This administration has successfully put “The Con” in contraception, by hiding an anti-life agenda in the construction of the Affordable Care Act and forcing Americans to fund anti-life drugs mislabeled as contraception.
Tuesday, noted attorney, Paul Clement will stand before the Supreme Court to argue Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, in defense of the Green family, the owners of Hobby Lobby, who believe that the HHS regulations which require them to provide life-ending drugs, violates their conscience, which is protected under the First Amendment.
In so doing, Clement will be exposing a massive and deliberate disinformation campaign that has promoted life-ending drugs and devices as unobjectionable. And more importantly, cast these life-ending drugs as essential “health care.”
Confucius taught that defining words created reality. He said he would “fix the language” if given the choice of ultimate power. “To govern,” Confucius said, “means to rectify names.”
With deft misdirection, the administration has focused the public debate on “contraception, “as well as on whether the government can force religious organizations opposed to contraception to pay for these drugs and devices in their health insurance policies.This is the debate that the administration wants to have.
They do not want Americans to see the long con they’ve set up that moves us all toward normalizing and mainstreaming life-ending drugs and devices by mislabeling them as contraception. And then coercing all to pay for them.
Confucius would be proud.
Most Americans do not know that Hobby Lobby has a history of providing contraceptive coverage in their employee health care plans. They do not object to contraception, but to life-ending drugs that have been mislabeled as “contraception.”
For many women today, “pregnancy” as a personal reality, begins when she first sees the results from a home pregnancy test. The scientific reality is that the life of a new human being begins much earlier at conception and that drugs can end that life – something the abortion industry and their lobby actively and proudly promotes.
This question of when life begins is the central question of fact in the Hobby Lobby case.
Notably, advocates of these drugs and devices, including Dr. James Trussell of Princeton and the Guttmacher Institute, recently authored an article “Embracing post-fertilization methods of family planning: a call to action” in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care. In the article, cited in our brief, they assert, “we should openly acknowledge” and even “celebrate” the post-fertilization, life-ending mechanisms of action of these drugs and devices.
The fact that life begins at fertilization is settled science. In the brief Americans United for Life filed in support of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties, we detail the post-fertilization effect that life-ending drugs inflict, sometimes preventing a new human being from continuing to live by implanting in the uterus.
The brief was filed on behalf of several medical groups, all of whom represent doctors and nurses who believe that being forced to provide coverage for such life-ending drugs violates their constitutionally protected freedom of conscience.
Some antagonists will dodge this bright-line reality centered on the beginning of life, by arguing that “pregnancy” does not begin until implantation. Some won’t address the issue at all.
Recently, Fusion TV’s Jorge Ramos asked Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, when life begins and her reply drew some attention for its rhetorical evasion. “I don’t know,” she said, “that it’s relevant to the conversation.”
But it is relevant, as companies opposing their forced funding of anti-life drugs take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Even if we cannot agree on the ethics of destroying embryos that have not yet implanted, some of the drugs under consideration have extremely blurred lines. One of the drugs specifically covered by the coercion of the HHS mandate, ella is a chemical cousin of the abortion drug, RU-486, and works similarly. In fact, FDA labeling cautions that using ella during a known pregnancy is “contraindicated.”
Abortion advocates have moved from choice, to coercion, using job-killing, business-crushing fines to force compliance with their agenda. This isn’t about women’s health care; it’s about using ObamaCare as a Trojan Horse, sneaking normalization of life-ending policies into American society.
What could not be won at the ballot box is attempted in the big Con, mislabeling life-ending drugs as “contraception,” providing new income streams for an industry that deals in destruction and confusing the debate by conflating healthcare with anti-life policies.
Using rhetoric to disguise coercive power is an ancient art.
Our First Amendment was designed to protect pluralism. The Obama administration has put “The Con” in contraception – and our essential freedom is at stake.
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