I guess that pretty much sinks the OP’s thesis.
What religious organizations, where are these religious organizations located and when was this?
That’s not a cave. It’s exactly the same thing restated so religious people can understand it.
Before: Religious owned businesses must offer healthcare that includes birth control.
After: Religious owned businesses offer healthcare that doesn’t include birth control. But the health insurance company approaches the woman and offers her free birth control coverage.
Yeah, really different there. Also, since no one has bothered to answer this in the two threads I’ve asked it in:
Would you support Jehova’s Witness owned businesses offering health care that doesn’t cover blood transfusions?
Unfortunately you are wrong. You see you used the word “not”, which is exactly what the church did. They did “not” provide contraceptives to their employees. And then the government did “not” let them do that. By your logic, the government doesn’t have the right to force religious institutions to provide contraceptive health care but you forgot to keep going and say that the church does not have the right to force their employees to not use birth control.
And they are doing such a good job too. Did you know that a full 2% of Catholic women devoutly follow that rule and do not use birth control? With any luck, by next year it’ll be 3% or 3.5%
If everyone get motorcycles (ie. employer provided health care) but one employer doesn’t want to provide it, they should be mandated to. Otherwise, they are restricting freedom. The church can provide the motorcycles but through their anti-motorcycle beliefs, the members don’t have to ride them
More of them can afford it if their employer provides it. If the church freely provides it, then that number will increase
No, he isn’t.
This is really convoluted logic. How is not providing birth control coverage violating the “right” of their employees to use birth control? Is the Church going to strap the woman in question down to a chair or monitor her 24/7 to ensure that she uses no form of birth control? One’s ability to use or partake in a certain thing is not contingent on someone else providing coverage for it.
It’s only not different if you ignore the difference. The Church isn’t paying for it.
My position is that there should be compelling interest when overriding someone’s religious faith, and blood transfusions are 1) very expensive and 2) often life saving procedures. You can’t just go to your local Planned Parenthood office and pick 2 units of B-negative blood, and then have a licensed caregiver administer it to you during your operation.
In short: bad analogy.
But the goal of the initial legislation was not to ensure that religious organizations had to spend money on providing birth control. It was to ensure that as many women as possible got access to insurance-covered birth control. Which this does. Obama got what he wanted, albeit in a round about way.
The church wouldn’t have been paying for originally. The rule provides contraceptive care at no charge.
Oh, so as long as the reason is good enough, you’re willing to fuck a religion. Color me impressed.
No religion was being oppressed here. The Catholic Church just saw an issue it could bleat about for a spike in popularity.
You might want to read the thread.
My comment on that bit of preemptive freakout is “awaiting moderation” and somehow I suspect it will never see the light of day:
Well caving prematurely is pretty consistent with Obama’s general strategy whenever conservatives object to anything he does. It does destroy the idea that it’s clever electoral politicking, however, since if his central idea had been giving Romney hell he should have dragged it out at least until Super Tuesday.
This is too garbled for me to understand.
I see. So you’re telling me that if the government “mandates” that employers offer a certain benefit, that’s “freedom”. If employers have the ability to decide for themselves whether or not to offer a certain benefit, that’s “restricting freedom”.
Dude, that book by George Orwell that you’re reading is a social satire, not a how-to guide.
Currently contraception is free, so by definition anyone who wants it can afford it. The CDC report that I’ve linked to, which you’ve ignored multiple times, says as much. Since all women (and men) can afford it, it’s mathematically impossible for the number who can afford it to increase, so you’re wrong. Okay, strictly speaking the “number” of people who can afford contraception can increase, but the percentage cannot go above 100% of those who contraception, which is where it’s at right now.
Neither you nor anyone else ahs answered Omg’s question in this thread. You refered to “the religious organizations who were trying to strip freedoms from their employees by not allowing them to choose whether they wanted to use contraceptives or not”. Omg wanted to know what religious organizations you’re refering to. It certainly can’t be the Catholic Church, since every employee of the Catholic Church has the freedom to use contraception if they want to. (If your reply is that poor employees of the Catholic Church can’t afford it, that’s been answered ad nauseum already.
Hahaha. For conservatives always talking about how the cost of regulation and taxation on corporations is passed on to the consumer it’s hilarious to think that this accommodation would shut them up.
Scenario One: Insurance companies provide group policy that costs $X dollars and covers contraception as part of the plan.
Scenario Two: Insurance companies provide a group policy that costs $X + Y dollars but doesn’t cover contraception but allows group members to get free contraception coverage directly from the insurance company.
Explain to me how this is any different?
I would think it would be obvious. Isn’t this entire thread about the Catholic church whining that it shouldn’t be forced to make contraceptives *available *to its employees? Rather than comply and rely on its employees to be good little Catholics, it’s not even giving them the choice.
Can the employees get them elsewhere? Of course. But why not make them available and rely on those employees to be good Catholics? Why does the church have to make their decisions for them (by removing the option)?
As I said, this is the church doing the best it can to remove freedoms from its employees.
That was my initial reaction, but after reading up on the announcement, I’ve come to see that it isn’t a compromise so much as it’s a workaround. Basically, Obama is just removing the mechanism that the GOP has been championing insofar as his “unfair treatment” of religious organizations. Everything that would’ve happened in the ORIGINAL plan will still take place (ie women working for religious-affiliated employers will still be able to get no-cost contraceptives), only now it’ll be the insurance company that’ll directly pay for it as opposed to the employers.
Like I said, not really a cave; I don’t really see how the GOP can possibly bitch about this now, but I’m sure they will.
Still, in electoral terms it’s not the SUBSTANCE of the thing that’s important, it’s the PERCEPTION. See: Swiftboating. Obama should not be doing anything to look more reasonable, because he WANTS the social conservatives riled so they’ll get out there and vote for Santorum or Gingrich. So while it may not be caving in the logical sense, it does run counter to the idea of this as an electoral stratagem.
You use the word “mandate” like its a bad thing. The government mandates we all have a certain level of protection, that you shouldn’t be drinking poisoned groundwater, breathing (too) polluted air, or work without adequate safeguards. In this case, the government mandates that contraception, being a huge part of women’s health, is a part of an overall health care benefits package. Its a great mandate, contraception is all of those things and more, and nobody should be forced to choose between health or food.
By taking away the employee’s right to choose to have it or not, the church is infringing upon the employee’s right to use birth control if she cannot afford it. Not everyone who works for the church is Catholic, and not all Catholics follow the church’s recommendation that they not use birth control. No freedom exists when the church takes that from you
Its free because its part of health insurance, something the church is trying to take away
That’s because his question is stupid. The church prevents employees from freely using it since they don’t provide it. For those working for the church and too poor to get it, that choice is taken away. An even greater freedom, moreso than Obama’s compromise, would be if the church gives all its employees contraceptives. Then they can choose whether or not to use it. An even greater freedom than that is if the church disappears and allows people to be free from their influence on contraceptives. And the ultimate freedom in birth control that is not being practiced by the church would be if they genetically engineered superhumans who did not have to give birth or have sex but have functioning organs to do both.
Just like how Voodoo run hospitals allow for the option of snake bites and cursed dolls in the relieving/causing of pain, the church should allow contraceptives to be avaiable on their Amazon.com page. Not everyone chooses the snakes, though you’d be surprised how many do, but the option is there.
From what I heard, Protestant-run hospitals are offering an alternative to Catholic ones, because they are for freedom and not a bunch of commies. A local Protestant hospital is offering free contraceptives to patients (not only their emplyees) and also free conversions to Protestanism. So far, they’ve only got Episcopalian, Methodist, and Northern Baptist, but in a few weeks they’ll extend their menu of religious choices to the other denominations.
Its tough being poor. Its even tougher being poor when you got kids. For heavens sake, let poor people fuck without worrying about making babies, or at least don’t bitch when they do!
But they do, don’t they? Can’t hardly wait to piss and moan about how lucky welfare moms are, how they are churning out babies. And this is church-going people, followers of the same Jesus I learned about in Sunday school? No wonder He wept. Probably still is.
I did and that doesn’t really any my question.
What choice is being taken away? Women can still use birth control, as no one can force them not to. You seem to be under the impression that “an organization refusing to provide contraceptive coverage” is the same thing as “a woman being denied the ability to use contraceptives”. I really don’t understand how you go from the former to the latter, but it’s still ridiculous.
In any case, the Catholic church isn’t even trying to stop women from using birth control; they just don’t want to be forced to provide coverage for it.
Women who work for the church and cannot afford it.
The church is forcing them not to by not providing them the means of exercising their own choice. If the church actually wanted people to have free choice, they would provide birth control and recommend that no one use it
It is when there are women working for the church that can’t afford it
Please cite where the Pope makes the distinction that Catholics are ok with birth control as long as the church doesn’t pay for it