PJ MEDIA
Posted at 10:13 am on February 10th, 2012 by
What the president announced in this press conference today is not a compromise. It’s not even an accommodation. It’s a lie.
Opening with a laugh, the president cited statistics that the majority of women, Catholic and otherwise, use contraception at some point in their lives. He cited another statistic that many of them have trouble paying for their own contraception at some point in their lives. He used these statistics to justify his position that religious charities should be forced to pay for contraceptive, abortifacient and sterilization services.
All of these statistics miss the point, that forcing Americans to pay for others’ lifestyle choices is always going to be controversial. That forcing religious institutions to pay for services that violate their core beliefs is unconstitutional and morally wrong.
The “accommodation” announced today does little more than introduce dishonesty to the administration’s use of force to violate faith. This “accomodation” was pre-approved by the likes of Planned Parenthood, which approved of the ghastly policy in the first place and stands to make money from the decision, but was not discussed with the very church leaders who objected to it for fundamental reasons ahead of time. That says much about how much the administration was actually willing to bend: Not an inch. The president insists that the coverage will be “free of charge,” which is absurd. Someone will pay for this. That someone will be everyone, including the very religious institutions betrayed by the original decision. Insurance companies will factor the costs of the services into their prices. This is basic economics.
This is where ObamaCare has brought this country. The bill we had to pass in order to find out what was in it, now has the administration directly lying to the people in pursuit of its “core principle,” which is making abortion as widely available as possible and paid for by everyone. That is the administration’s “core principle,” and as evidenced by today’s phony “accommodation,” this president will let nothing including the freedom of conscience stand in his way.
Update: Dr. Richard Land, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, calls Obama’s “accommodation”“lipstick on a pig.”