One of the more difficult things about writing a daily political blog is trying to discuss all pertinent issues in a timely fashion. Sometimes, when the President tries to pull the wool over our eyes the day before a Republican Primary, something gets pushed off to the side. For a day.
Last week, the Catholic Church and many other religious organizations went to the wall with President Obama on one of those lovely hidden rules in the Obamacare law (you know, the ones we had to “pass the bill to find out what’s in it” hidden rules), this time requiring all hospitals and other medical practices to provide abortion, contraception, and sterilization (for the record, this usually means vasectomy or tubal ligation aka tube tying) services or not receive any federal funding.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’d like to quickly outline my personal views on this subject. I have no moral objection to contraception. Contraception means methods of preventing pregnancy through either a barrier that stops the male genetic material from fertilizing the female genetic material. (For the record, I consider vasectomy and tubal ligation as contraception, albeit permanent…they keep one or both sets of genetic material in their respective biological storehouses.) I have huge moral objections to abortion. Abortion is the process of destroying a fertilized human embryo. I believe that life begins at conception, and that all human life is precious because it is created in the image of God.
To give a crude analogy, let’s consider the male genetic material a lit match and the female genetic material as a bucket of gasoline. Contraception would be the process of keeping the match away from the gasoline. Abortion is extinguishing the fire after the match hits the gasoline. My belief according to my faith is that it is ok to stop the fire from happening (preventing pregnancy), but not to extinguish the fire (aka destroying the human life).
I am not alone. The Roman Catholic Church, most traditional Protestant denominations and pretty much all Evangelical and Pentecostal denominations are opposed to abortion. In those groups the beliefs on contraception are not so universal. Many of those are also opposed to contraception. I believe that human life begins at conception; not at some point after conception, but also not at some point before conception. Simply stated, it’s not a human until the genetic material combines.
The President, however, has decided to take for himself a power that does not belong to him: the power to force individuals of faith to fund procedures their faith says is murder. Now the Constitution is clear, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” You know why it says “Congress shall make no law”? Because the President DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO PASS LAWS! Period. The President may either sign off on laws or veto them, but he has no right to pass them on his own. Period. But we’ll get back to that. Congress has no right to force any individual to go against their religion. (The only exception is that one man’s liberty ends at another person’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.)
So the President’s attempt to force individuals and hospitals and organizations to provide abortion, contraception, and sterilization services is absolutely, 100% Unconstitutional. Period. But there is more to this problem. The Obamacare law and the President wanted to force these organizations not only to provide these services but to PAY FOR THEM! He wants to force organizations with moral objections to not only provide these services but pay for them for their employees, free of charge.
So then, last week, the President came out with a “compromise.” Instead of requiring the organizations to provide these services to their employees free of charge, now, out of the goodness of his heart, he’s telling the Insurance Company that THEY must pay for these services. Oh, and by the way, do you know who is forced to provide Insurance to their employees due to the Obamacare law? Employers! So the same conscientious objecting employers are being forced to provide the Insurance which is forced to provide the objectionable services. Translation: Obama is still requiring those groups to pay for services they find morally objectionable!
One last thing: The President calls these new services that insurance companies are required to cover “free of charge.” Baloney. Does the President HONESTLY believe that Insurance companies are going to just provide these services, which by the way are far more expensive than the co-pay that we shell out as consumers, letting that cut into their profit margins? OF COURSE NOT! You know how insurance companies will recoup that loss? I’ll tell you how: Raise premiums. But Obamacare will lower costs, right?
Bottom line, this is just another liberal social program being forced on people against their will because Obama and the liberals know better than we do what’s best for us. So let’s do our nation a favor and elect ourselves a new President.
