The pill has accomplished a lot more than the mere regulation of hormones this month. It has unmasked the Obama administrations’ steps toward unlimited power for the central government and its unique disdain for people who don’t think like the aristocratic left, who prefer to regulate the great unwashed from safe distances in the nation’s capitol and Manhattan cocktail parties.
No semantic change in policy will change the central problems with the stance the Obama administration tried to take. '
President Obama asserts with his policy tweak Friday that insurance companies will now do – for free – what faith-based organizations do not wish to do. Nonsense. Companies will price their products based on actual costs, and all will cover that expense.
In the controversy over forcing faith-based organizations, charities and non-profits to include coverage for life-ending drugs, sterilizations and contraception – against their religious beliefs – the Obama administration has stepped in not one – but two – constitutional quagmires.
Much has been said about the obvious violations of the First Amendment right to religious freedom trampled so obviously by the administration’s decree that all faith-based organizations have one-year or else to comply with administration thinking – or else.
But what about the constitutional protections that the Founding Fathers insisted upon that no one would be forced to pay monies to the church of the ruling class or to be punished for not being a member of the philosophical temple of choice.
For this is really a conflict of worldview and of faith.
One worldview looks back over two thousand years of tradition, practice and doctrine for guidance.
One worldview refuses such introspection to insist with a zealot’s fervor that no reliable standard of right and wrong exist, and that life has no meaning other than what is expressed in The New York Times.
Courts are already considering the constitutionality of forcing Americans to buy something they do not want.
How can a government of the people, by the people and for the people punish the people if they don’t shop at Obama’s health care store?
Obama’s health care law and its forced payments and penalties uniquely violates a constitutional principle that no one should be forced to pay into the church, the pet project or the philosophical love child of any ruling class. For it is a secular truism that the state should rule over the church and supersede all other institutions.
It is the Obama administration’s thuggish behavior that illustrates the slippery slope so clearly. Their cavalier attitude that people of faith should throw aside beliefs in favor of politically correct thinking is breathtakingly insulting and ignorant of the very nature of faith in its assumptions.
Contraception access is not the issue. It must come to a shock to the limousine crowd that no longer goes to the drug store for themselves that access to contraception is everywhere.
You can find it right next to the monthly products women are quite familiar with.
Doctors write prescriptions for patients who see them every day.
Vending machines can even be found in some bathrooms with supplies.
And in fact, the federal government already pays for contraception through numerous programs.
The issue is not whether contraception is available. The issue is who pays. And whether all, including the Catholic Church, must be made to kiss the ring of the American monarch and swear loyalty to his value system.
Henry the Eighth would be proud.
The contraception wars have begun to play out like an epic struggle between the Tudors and the known world, and all must subscribe to the viewpoint of the ruling class or lose business and favor and fortune.
One looks for the ghost of Sir Thomas Moore to emerge with the timeless message that it is not always possible to bow to the demands of the ruling class.
For the record, I am not Catholic, nor do I share all the views of the Catholic Church on contraception. (Interestingly, the Obama administration has chosen to include life-ending drugs like ella under its definition of “contraception” as though there is no moral difference between killing a life and altering a cycle. Such moral lapses seem common to this administration.)
The Catholic Church is not alone in its dismay and fury with the policy. A growing number of liberals and conservatives, scholars and laymen, values voters and the business class are coalescing in protest of the violation of the conscience rights of Americans.
One of the benefits of being an American is that you don’t have to alter your views to be embraced in society or pay a tithe to the king’s church. Or at least it used to be that way.
This is not a controversy that will go gently into that good night. Tweaking the language of the dictate will not close the matter. And this is not about the pill.
If first the government comes for the Catholics, and we say nothing, who will there be to protest when a powerful, emboldened, secular government turns its attentions on the rest of America?
ObamaCare and all the forming tentacles of its coercive programs must be overturned to protect the freedoms we all rely on.
Kristi Stone Hamrick is a media consultant.
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