The President and Birth Control

The Obama Administration may have scored the political hit of the year with the birth control issue. In an era where religious liberty doesn't mean as much as it should, the President has mapped out a plan to make religion look bad while also making conservatives in general seem out of touch with the nation they love. By insisting that somehow, some way the seriously religious support something they morally cannot, Barack Obama may have found a way to ensure his reelection this fall.

He knows what he's doing. He's taken an issue which hasn't meant much for decades now and made it a front and center bone of contention. He's placed supposed women's rights against freedom of religion and is sitting back letting the spectacle play itself out. And who wins? He does.

The compromise he's offered is no compromise at all; indeed, one wonders whether compromise is possible on such questions. To say that Catholic institutions don't have to pay for birth control services yet insurers do misses the point: where does it leave insurers who may have the moral convictions of the Catholic Church? And it still, even if arguably only indirectly, forces Catholic institutions to pay for it.

It would be easy to say that we have a President who doesn't understand the Constitution. But that's not the case: we have a President who doesn't care about it. He's called it 'deeply flawed'. With that attitude, it's no wonder that such a historically important right as freedom of religion (and conscience) mean little to him. Our basic freedoms are little but political footballs to any community organizer.

Hopefully, Americans will see through this, remember their Constitution, and vote accordingly. But for now, the President has released his bull upon the china shop. And he doesn't care who has to pick up the pieces if it gets him a second term.