House Democrats, reports the Huffington Post, “have raised more than $1.1 million in the past week from their “War on Women” campaign“:
The DCCC launched its campaign on Feb. 23. Since then, Democrats have been using it to raise money, collect signatures on petitions and generally fire up their base ahead of elections. The campaign comes in response to the debate raging on Capitol Hill over women’s access to birth control that escalated with House Republicans hosting an almost entirely male hearing on the issue in mid-February.
Emphasis added. No, the debate is not about women’s access to birth control, but about the federal government mandating what benefits private organizations can offer their employees. At least we know what the Democrats’ rhetorical crusade is really about: raising money and firing up their base.
John Hinderaker gets at the real problem with the mandate:
why on Earth is the government in the business of telling any employers, not just religious institutions, what benefits they must offer their employees? Employers offer benefits solely in order to attract qualified workers. Employees, in turn, have various preferences about benefits and cash wages. Some employees don’t want any benefits at all; they prefer to take all of their compensation in cash.
. . . .
There is nothing wrong with any of these choices, and employers and employees ought to be free to agree on whatever combination of cash and benefits serves the employees’ needs and allows the employer to attract qualified workers. Why is this any of the government’s business? It isn’t. When government, at any level, dictates what benefits all employers must offer to their employees, thereby minimizing employee choice and decreasing employees’ wages, everyone loses.
Read the whole thing.
Don’t let the Democrats deceive you. This isn’t about women’s access to contraception, but about private organizations ability to set their own employment policies. About the choices they have. And the choices they can offer their employees.
And gee whiz, doesn’t Mrs. Pelosi claim to be pro-choices?
I think the healthcare law is shitty and that the better way would have been for the government to simply provide government to people directly, but I suppose I understand the need to try to work towards that goal incrementally. Yes, yes, we all know that conservatives think that the American healthcare system is the greatest in the world and that the only thing that we should change is to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid, but that’s an argument we can have another time. That isn’t the thrust of the controversy in this case.
Polling indicates that this issue is playing more towards evangelicals than it is to Catholics. The vast majority of Catholics don’t care, but this is right up the conservative movement’s ally, with their hysterical fears about Obama’s supposedly dictatorial and anti-religious policies. Republicans, as usual, are drumming up social issues in an election year to enrage and motivate their base. This hasn’t played out as a conversation about the advantages or disadvantages of socialized medicine, the Republicans have successfully framed it as the government forcing people to act against their conscience. It isn’t that, of course, but you’ve been convinced it is, and that’s why you’re talking about it.
And for a moment, let’s consider these pleas of conscience from the Catholic bishops. Opposition to contraception is a backwards attitude that is bad for society, which if widely implemented would cause more people to be sick, set back female equality, and kill many thousands or millions more people every year. It’s a completely immoral doctrine, and people who actually consider it the morally righteous thing to do are delusional. By all means, you can have your stupid beliefs, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to abide by them. If you hate contraception don’t take it, it’s really quite simple.
I wonder if these Catholics have considered the possibility that the paychecks they give to their employees are going in some small part towards the purchase of contraceptives? Does that keep them awake at night?
As much as you’d like to pretend this is an issue of freedom and that the rights of the employer are being trampled on, it isn’t. In this situation, an employer is claiming the right to be exempt from a law that everyone else has to abide based on religious dogma. The first amendment is actually designed to defend people from that kind of stuff. Yes, it’s about protecting freedom of expression, but it’s also a statement about no religion getting any kind of special treatment. Special treatment is what the Catholic bishops are looking for here.
So what is more important to you? Should we set a precedent where people get to be exempt from laws if they conjure up some religious gobbledegook, or is it more important that the healthcare decisions made by women and their doctors aren’t interfered with by their small-minded employers who until recently supported the spreading of AIDS over the spreading of condoms?
As for the Republican war on women, it’s a real thing. Rush Limbaugh is illustrating that point beautifully, by pervertedly asking women that use contraception to film themselves having sex and posting it on the internet. Yeah, it’s no big deal for the biggest conservative media personality to be calling a woman a slut and a prostitute because they had the temerity to disagree with him. Don’t you think Limbaugh could have made his point about not wanting to pay for other people’s birth control without resorting to the sexual denigration of a human being?
As a long time business owner my view is that we are seeing the federal government (And my local governments too.) mandating union rules/regulations on the non union private sector.
If you go back to initial posts on the topic, you’ll see that I expresed exactly those sentiments.
I mean, it’s nice being way ahead of the curve,but YEESH!
And the usual leftist flip that if you don’t want the Government to pay for something or force someone else to pay for something, it means you hate the people who were going to get that supposed freebie? Yeah, well, who couldn’t have seen that coming.
It’s like if a Democrat proposed that all little girls should be required to have a free pony and a massive PonyCare program to pay for the pony, and Republicans said the Government has no business providing little girls with ponies… the left would declare that the Republican Party has declared War on Little Girls.
Requiring religious organizations to provide coverage for birth control is akin to requiring the NAACP to pay KKK membership dues for all employees.
Reproductive control is a fundamental human right that modern civilization has an obligation to protect for women, and every attempt by conservatives to eliminate abortion or contraception is working against that right. Historically, the conservative side of every political conflict for thousands of years has always sided against women. I don’t know that Republicans hate women, but you’re very easily manipulated into supporting positions that have the effect of oppressing them. Women just can’t catch a break, conservatives don’t want them to have abortions, but they also don’t want them to have contraception, which was something designed specifically to prevent abortions in the first place! How is a girl supposed to enjoy sex up in this motha?
And that’s the point – the conservative religious movement hates the idea that women might actually enjoy sex, same as it has been for thousands of years. Of course, they’ll go balls to the wall to prevent women from obtaining contraception, but if they find out some priests in their employ are molesting kids and pedophiles are escaping with slaps on their wrists. The hypocrisy of religion and conservatism is on full display with this little flare-up, as well as the susceptibility of the conservative base to be distracted with social issues of extremely exaggerated importance.
Because Levi says so? Or, because it’s something liberals want to have, and that makes it a right?
No dipshit, because greater degrees of reproductive control always increases quality of life for women and is more responsible for the decrease in gender inequality than anything else. Women have always bared more of the burden of having offspring, which provides men with ample opportunity to exploit, marginalize, or otherwise diminish them. Christopher Hitchens argues that the best way to eliminate poverty is the empowerment of women, and part of empowering women involves giving them control over their own reproductive system. That’s been proven the case time and again since the Industrial Revolution, and here we are in 2012 and conservatives think they’re going to win the presidency by trying to turn back the clock on that progress.
One must realize, of course, that according to Levi’s “logic,” since the right to bear arms is an established right embedded in the Constitution, the Government is obliged to buy everyone a gun.
Contra the deranged ranting of the left, Conservatives are not trying to use the Government to force people to stop having sex. The only people who are out to strip us of our ability to make health care decisions for ourselves are liberal Demonrats via ObamaCare.
It seems to me that Levi’s view of women is :
They are too stupid to keep from getting pregnant.
They are too stupid to find programs that will offer them affordable birth control/abortions.
They are too stupid to know that if they want full reproductive rights, they must accept full reproductive responsibilities.
They are too stupid to know that a religion based organization may not be willing to pay for their birth control/abortion/sterilization.
Why do liberals think women are so stupid?
Experience dealing with liberal women?
Levi’s afraid of powerful intelligent women with self control. Thus his hatred of Sarah Palin who by any standard is more intelligent, more successful and a better person than he.
He’s also upset that he doesn’t have Sandra Fluke’s number. If he could score with anyone, it would be her.
Now hush Levi, the adults are talking.
This Sandra Fluke woman was claiming that contraception cost $3,000 a year… a cost she wanted someone else, taxpayers, other people on her insurance plan… to pay for.
An enterprising reporter found out that not only are free condoms abundantly available on the Georgetown campus, but birth patrol pills could be acquired from local merchants for as little as $9 a month.
So, at most, it would cost $108 a year for birth patrol pills. What did she need the other $2,892 for? That’s what, four or five abortions? Now, unlike Andrew Sullivan, I am not an expert on female reproduction systems. But I wouldn’t think a woman can get pregnant five times in a normal year.
Or, like Rush hilariously pointed out yesterday, $1,000 per year was sufficient to buy enough condoms from Amazon.com for Flake to have sex five times a day for every day of the year.
Moreover, we have the gay and lesbian liberal brigade screaming about how birth control pills, abortions, IUDs, and everything else prevent STDs, which is flatly false.
I think you hit the nail on the head, V, which is why Sandra Flake is not revealing how she calculated her numbers: she and her ilk are essentially demanding that we pay for her birth control pills AND her minimum two abortions per year — which would also indicate that she’s not taking her pills.
And then we have this.
Actually, the funny part about this is watching how the delusional statements that Levi makes contradict each other.
1) Contraception reduces poverty
2) 98% of women currently use contraception
3) Poverty rates are going up
If contraception truly reduced any of these things, you would think with 98% of women using them, there would be no abortions, there would be no babies born out of wedlock, there would be no poverty, etc.
Yet since the 1960s when contraception started being handed out like candy, all of these things have skyrocketed.
The facts don’t bear you out, Levi. Your magical thinking in the power of contraception is shown to be completely irrational wishcasting.
@NDT
Don’t forget, Levi argues that we need to put the poor on birth control so there aren’t more of them. His next step I’m sure, will be to mandate the undesirables be sterilized, to better to make sure they don’t flood the system.
According to Levi, being poor makes you into a slut. i.e. To Levi, being poor just means you’re a Georgetown Law Student.
Some people claim that opposition to conversion therapy is immoral, and that widely implementing it will cause many more people to be sick from AIDS.
What the issue here is not whether women can buy birth control, or whether health insurance companies can cover birth control. It is whether health insurance companies should be required to cover birth control.
As an aside, I have no opinion on the (de)merits of conversion therapy. I do not have a problem with health insurers covering it, or employers offering health insurance that covers it.
I do have a problem with the government mandating that health insurers cover it.
Not so. And even if it was, the Supreme Court plainly rejected the idea that refusing to fund such things amounts to an infringement of a fundamental right. Maher v. Roe, 432 U.S. 464 at 475 (1977)
“why on Earth is the government in the business of telling any employers, not just religious institutions, what benefits they must offer their employees?”
And for “free”!
Just so.