Still, the administration has another motivation to act as quickly as possible: It is eager to court the votes of women dismayed by the rulings. The Democratic National Committee is already urging voters to fight back against the Hobby Lobby decision and to “stand up for Obamacare” in the November elections.Of course, political advantage will be taken. This issue is served up nicely for Democrats. What can Republicans do? Personally, I recommend that the federal government directly pay for all birth control. Take the employers, all employers, out of the process of funding birth control and make it a straightforward public health program.
You know, we ought to be glad that women control their reproductive function to the extent that they do. We can't force women to use birth control. We should at least facilitate the voluntary behavior that benefits all of us. It's ridiculous that we've stumbled into a position where this perfectly wholesome governmental policy is bedeviling religious people.
Posts
206 comments:
1 – 200 of 206 Newer› Newest»"We can't force women to use birth control. We should at least facilitate the voluntary behavior that benefits all of us."
How NOT having kids benefits life will remain a mystery when we're gone,...
"this perfectly wholesome governmental policy."
Interesting, as some say when the object of the statement is, well, interesting.
The feminist program never includes upgrading the voting performance of women.
Let's hear it for moods.
GOP should push for over-the-counter birth control.
Also, why should bc be the only prescription you pay nothing for? Heart medicine is far more important for health, after all...
How does birth control usage benefit us all? Western birth rates are already below replacement levels in most countries (we barely hit replacement levels).
If people want an ever-expanding welfare state, having fewer kids is little more than selfishness.
If we wanted to facilitate voluntary behavior that benefits all of us, we could give money to criminals to be good, money to kids to stay in Mexico, money to help formation of interracial couples, and money for abortions.
It makes no sense, after all, for people to be good for nothing.
Ridiculous issue. If it were a serious issue, Sandra Fluke would be on her way to Congress. Obamacare will collapse of its own incompetence.
Personally, I recommend that the federal government directly pay for all birth control. Take the employers, all employers, out of the process of funding birth control and make it a straightforward public health program.
That was the tacit suggestion of SCOTUS as well, was it not -- that there were other less intrusive ways for government to reach its goals? But I am cynical enough to believe that a good chunk of the electorate wants a show down with religious freedom; they want to force churches to stop resisting. We will soon be able to gauge the left's intent on this, based on the noises they make.
Althouse (who voted for Obama) gives advice to the GOP:
Forget your principles of smaller government and create a new program. Foregoing principles is always the way to political success.
Also, women cannot be expected to pay $4 a month out of pocket to avoid pregnancy because they are so terrible at risk analysis. This demands collective action!
Althouse's War on Women!
Take the employers, all employers, out of the process of funding birth control and make it a straightforward public health program.
Yep.. brilliant -- it is called "family planning" in third world countries. But of course, if the problem gets solved, how do you create permanent votebanks? If Obama does something as sane as that, he can't have his "war on women" and can't get gullible women riled up enough to vote for him. It is all politics, all the time.
"ARTICLE I.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, ...."
If Sonya Sotomayor, or you, or Aloysius T. Ridgley, GS-11, Step 5, somewhere in the bowels of HHS, gets to examine my religious beliefs and rule on the depth and sincerity of the same, I have no "freedom of religion."
I recommend that the federal government directly pay for all birth control. Take the employers, all employers, out of the process of funding birth control and make it a straightforward public health program.
Sorry, that solution is just too straightforward and wise for Obama or the GOP to push for it.
Do large majorities think supplying free abortifacients would be a wholesome program?
See the light and internalize that we Americans are a free people who are governed only through our consent.
Live up to his oath to defend the Constitution - in particular the 1st Amendment - and stop assaulting the religious values of the predominant religion in the Country.
I recommend that the federal government directly pay for all birth control
Get your vagina out of my wallet.
And learn to cross your legs.
Personally, I recommend that the federal government directly pay for all birth control.
1) How the hell does this square with "get the government out of the bedroom"?
2) What is next....free coffee? free internet?
3) Why aren't women outraged at the notion that they cannot support themselves and their sex lives, and need the government to subsidize it?
---we ought to be glad that women control their reproductive function to the extent that they do. We can't force women to use birth control. We should at least facilitate the voluntary behavior that benefits all of us. ---
Yes, it is fine that women are taking responsibility for that 9 dollar per month life cost. Why is that so onerous that we have to involve the government? And are you joining with the left in conflating birth control with the Obama administration's celebration of abortifacientss?
How should Pres. Obama respond?
Clearly, he should use various federal, state, and local agencies to harass and intimidate the justices and court staffers. Perhaps there are zoning violations at their homes. Perhaps some employ undocumented Americans. Perhaps some should be stopped while driving to work. Perhaps some have children who have unusual internet surfing and purchasing habits or have made interesting lifestyle decisions. Perhaps some should get mysterious phone calls. A few dead cats on the driveway at dawn, that sort of thing.
@Althouse, I'm sure you think your phrase "bedeviling religious people" is cute. I think it ought to be beneath a serious law professor.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but was not the Hobby Lobby decision about specific Obamacare contraception drugs, namely those which were not contraceptives but actually abortifacients?
As to Wheaton College, if a young woman and/or her parents decides that contraception is important to her, are there no other colleges she could attend? Perhaps a riff-raff football factory like, say, UW-Madison? Or perhaps she could purchase contraceptives out of pocket -- surely a negligible expense next to tuition, room and board, books, and booze.
I'm sorry to see that women, even learned women such as yourself and justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg have difficulty wrapping your brains around the notion that the role of a judge is to apply the law -- in this case RFRA. If RFRA is too much for you, then get it repealed.
Perhaps this "problem" has already been fixed.
Yesterday - on our Independence Day, the Departmental of HHS, issued 1,200 pages of additional regulations for Obama Care. Of course, since it was a legal Federal holiday, few, if any people were around to hear about this, much less get copies of the 1,200 pages of new, additional regulations to Obama Care. Fortunately, Betsy McCaughney (R) a former Lt.Gov. of NY, did read those regulations, but IF they "fix" Obama's problems, she didn't say. She focused mostly on how more difficult it would be for Doctors to accept Medicare patients instead.
Be careful what you wish for. In the Soviet Union contraceptives were provided as part of a single payer (single buyer) program.
Trouble was, the only contraceptive product they bought was condoms. The condoms had the suppleness and delicacy of inner tubes.
This was fitting because in Soviet times, inner tubes had the strength and durability of condoms. They had a single buyer program for inner tubes too.
You would be much better off, spending your own money on products you have chosen for yourself.
Instead of offering free birth control, let's just make it non-prescription. Problem solved.
The Roe Effect. More birth control and more abortions amount to fewer Hillaries.
Why just birth control?
That's nice and everything, but my son will die if he gets stung by a bee and doesn't have an EpinPen. I'd much rather the government protect people's lives by giving out free EpiPens. Getting stung by a bee isn't a behavior or activity he has any control over, after all.
Why solve the problem (with a pen) when you have ignorant and disengaged people to get votes from? "OMG Hobby Lobby Republicans Rape!!!!!"
We can't force women to use birth control. We should at least facilitate the voluntary behavior that benefits all of us.
...by forcing other people to pay for it. My sincere areligious beliefs preclude cooperating with socialism.
perfectly wholesome governmental policy
Since there's nothing wholesome about Obamacare, which policy would that be? Giving irresponsible people free stuff so they can continue to be irresponsible?
Why has access to free contraception become the most important perfectly wholesome governmental policy?
Perhaps because the policy of free birth control for all bedevils religious people.
Ann's suggestion sounds like good political advice. But in my view providing birth control is outside the scope of what the government ought to be doing.
As for birth control being available over the counter, I am agnostic whether that is appropriate medically. If it is, then why not? The only answer has to be readier availability to underage girls. Would readier availability encourage promiscuity? Probably, at the margin, but I am not moved to keep the medication prescription-only just because of that. Of course, my daughters are now adults and married.
It is not just about birth control. Religion of some kind is part of almost everyone's daily life - more than you perhaps realize - and it is impossible to establish a "Brave New World" without seriously infringing on the 1st Amendment particularly, but also the Constitution in general. "Tyranny" by the General Government was what it was written to prevent, and that is as applicable to a creeping bureaucracy as to overt rule by "King in Council (i.e., Parliament) of the 18th century.
Michael K said... Ridiculous issue.
It's ridiculous and also trivial - but another characteristic it shares with the issue of homosexual marriage is that it's an easy to understand litmus test, hence the constant ratcheting-up of the issue in the socialist media.
As an alternative, I think it makes more sense for women to use their own money to purchase whatever birth control items they wish--these items are all modest in price. Then, birth control would be a strictly private matter, with no employers, taxpayers, or bureaucrats involved. Less controversy, and cheaper, too, because no one would process the insurance claims.
But the Democrats need a talking point to prove that they are fighting for women.
That we have arrived at a point in this country where a demand by one group of citizens that other citizens provide funding for their ability to enjoy consequence-free recreational sex is not considered laughable but instead considered to be a reasonable demand is truly remarkable.
And truly regrettable.
On the other hand, shelling out cash so that a group of people with that mindset do not reproduce could be considered money well spent.
As long as we're thinking big...
"Take the employers, all employers, out of the process of funding [health insurance]"
How is Althouse's suggestion a solution?
Wouldn't it simply result in a new, politically exploitable argument over the federal government funding the same sub-set of birth control methods at the heart of the Hobby Lobby case?
To achieve the objectives Althouse proposes, wouldn't it make more sense to create a capped, refundable prescription tax credit not subject to itemization and the 7.5% AGI limitation that all people could use for all Rx drugs?
What's the obsession with birth control?
I know most law profs are not too knowledgeable about economics, but the only times it makes sense for the government to pay for something is when the social benefits demonstrably exceed the private benefits. Absent some demonstration that abortifacient birth control has social benefits exceeding the private benefits to the users--and hand-waving from the professor works in the classroom, but not here--there isn't any justification for such a program.
So KILLING BABIES 'benefits us all'?
That my be how you see it Ann, but I sank sure don't see it that way.
I never expected evolutionary dysfunction and moral corruption to be normalized as a "health program" and "reproductive rights", respectively. It was always a myth told of far away and long ago "civilizations". I guess Americans have outlived their sanity.
The issue is abortion/murder, not contraception/prevention. Abortion/murder is the willful, premature termination of human evolution from conception to death.
Every time the Obama Administration loses at the Supreme Court, I'm reminded of Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515 (1832). Historians still argue over whether or not President Jackson really said, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it." But the Cherokee are in Oklahoma to this day.
Why should the Feds, IOW the rest of us, pick up the tab for more free shit for women? There is no need for Birth Control, other than personal choice.
I thought Women were Strong and Independent and Didn't Need No Man or His Money to live her life.
Is that all just happy talk bullshit?
It isn't the 1950s and no one should be obligated to provide free shit for women that a husband would have normally provided back then.
Take the employers, all employers, out of the process of funding birth control and make it a straightforward public health program.
Take employers out of health care completely. But would Wahhabi Lobby let us do that?
The idea that buying women free shit for their vaginas recreation calendar "benefits us all" is yet more self serving bullshit from women.
Free Birth Control is a benefit to women and women alone.
Government involvement in the vagina?
No thanks.
Over-the-counter is the way to go.
The only benefit to a man paying for a woman's birth control is if there's going to be sex for that man.
"we ought to be glad that women control their reproductive function to the extent that they do"
1) Pro-choice women know there is a risk of pregnancy with intercourse but CHOOSE to take that risk anyway.
2) Pro-choice women know that birth control is not foolproof but CHOOSE to take that risk anyway.
And after making 2 bad CHOICES they pout and declare that denying them access to abortion violates their freedom to CHOOSE.
You say we should be thankful they are responsible? I ask "when are women going to be accountable for the choices they make?"
Ann;
Do men's birth control devices get paid for under your plan?
Do large majorities think supplying free abortifacients would be a wholesome program?
I think that the War on Women meme here only works if you hid the fact that it wasn't contraception that Hobby Lobby was objecting to paying for, but rather it was abortion, and, in this case, abortifacient type contraception. Of the 20 types of FDA approved birth control, they were paying for 16 of them, and intend to do so in the future. It is the other 4, considered by them to be abortifacients, that they are refusing to pay for.
Should the govt then also pay for sterilization surgery? It is likely more effective than birth control pills/shots/patches and so presumably even more wholesome? And at that point it becomes difficult to argue against govt paying for abortions. Wholesomeness all around!
Ms. Althouse, you are a master at the well-placed adjective designed to generate discussion. Well done!
Really, I have great difficulty understanding the moral argument for allowing a woman to do as she pleases with the life growing within her. I understand the practical argument -- that solution is the easiest and least costly to administer. But I have never heard a moral argument for abortion / abortifacient drugs.
I don't think we've stumbled into this position.
There's nothing more useless to a politician than a problem that's been solved. Better to put a wedge in the crack and start hammering on it.
OK, fine. Want government to pay for birth control.
It shouldn't be the pill or ANYTHING the woman has control over. It'll be the shot that kills the possibility of pregnancy for several years or an IUD that they are forbidden from removal without a penalty.
If I have to pay for it, you don't get to change your mind about it.
And when they fail (which they do --- rarely, but sometimes), are we obligated to pay for abortions as well?
I prefer Megan McArdle's proposal to make the pill available over the counter.
"Personally, I recommend that the federal government directly pay for all birth control."
Based on my experience with government programs, that would make birth control difficult to obtain. If you doubt that, see the vaccine experience. The Clintons made that a government program.
Oh, and the autism hysteria helped the shortages.
"The national recommendation to reduce or eliminate the content of the preservative thimerosal in vaccines given to children less than 6 months of age, required that the manufacturers of DTaP revise their manufacturing process of these vaccines, requiring more vaccine to be produced for the same number of doses and requiring a different packaging system. This contributed to the shortages of these vaccines in addition to the reasons given above.2"
Great idea.
What damikesc said. That.
In the dissent on the Wheaton College decision Sotomayor wrote the following:
“Let me be absolutely clear: I do not doubt that Wheaton genuinely believes that signing the self-certification form is contrary to its religious beliefs. But thinking one’s religious beliefs are substantially burdened — no matter how sincere or genuine that belief may be — does not make it so.”
So my question for Sotomayor (and you, Professor Althouse) is, if one's conscience cannot be trusted to evaluate whether one's religious beliefs are "substantially burdened," then who, precisely, does one turn to? Should a Catholic like Sotomayor decide whether a Protestant's conscience is burdened? Certainly not conservative Jews such as Kagan or Ginsberg, I presume?
If an atheist like me can see that, why can't they?
"As to Wheaton College, if a young woman and/or her parents decides that contraception is important to her, are there no other colleges she could attend?"
I think the policy more officially is meant to applies to married faculty and staff (and students if they're married). Wheaton has a statement of behavioral expectations that all involved with the college are required to sign (well required if they want to work/attend there). Normally called "the pledge." Among these is a pledge not to engage in any extramarital sex. Getting caught one way or other may and often does result in dismissal/expulsion.
That's not to say it doesn't happen, of course, but the culture there is heavily weighted towards institutional and peer pressure against.
No drinking either, for any student during the course of the term... anywhere.
When I was there in 90s, we weren't allowed to dance either. They changed that policy. Bunch of liberals.
What's interesting to me is that beyond the issue of pregnancy and consequence free sex (which is a hobby, not a medical need), the main public health benefit for contraception is STD prevention.
Only condoms (if I recall) help with that. What does health care not even consider covering? Condoms. So, health care will pay for contraception that saves entertainment expenses for women (outside of procreation, sex is entertainment), while paying millions (billions?) of dollars for STD treatment.
Where's the logic in that? Indeed, where's the war?
I love the euphemisms about "the government should pay"--as if "the government" has a bunch of money laying around doing nothing.
No, the government has no money of its own; it gets it from the taxpayers. Even though the Constitution gives the government authority over the currency, that is about form not content.
Many commenters see the vapidity of this locution by suggesting "the government" pay for all sorts of other things.
Friends, our utter laziness in opposing the entitlement culture we now have is coming back to haunt us big time. I do not see how a new civil war can be avoided; southern plantation owners were equally entrenched in their own version of entitlement from which they had to be evicted by war. Nowadays the Democrat plantation is crowded with clueless people fed by increasingly less clueless taxpayers. Neither will be willing to give up their expectations without a struggle.
"this perfectly wholesome governmental policy..."
I'm not going to touch on the arguable morality of this statement, only to note that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The reaction I'm thinking about involves female hormones in our drinking water. Not my idea of wholesome.
damikesc @9:38 AM got it exactly right. Fast track the FDA process for approval of over-the-counter birth control. Fast, easy, cheap access. Free market competition.
Free medicine is crazy when there is more than one kind. No price cues. The thing too few people noticed about the Sandra Fluke kerfuffle was that there is $1000 per year birth control out there. How many women thought, "Hey, if it's free, why am I using $8 pills from Wal-Mart?" Crap, why not just give the drug companies a licenses to print money? I guess you don't have to take a basic econ course to get into law school.
He should respond by saying 'the law is the law' and those of you who want it changed should pressure your congressmen into revising the RFRA'. He will respond by grossly and cynically distorting the decision to demonize Wheaton College, Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court, and all Republicans.
The idea that it is somehow the federal governments job to provide birth control to women is simply ludicrous. Of course, this country is now ruled by a vast unaccountable and unchecked bureaucracy and something like what Ann proposes is inevitable. The constitution had a nice run, too bad it's over.
"I think that the War on Women meme here only works if you hid the fact that it wasn't contraception that Hobby Lobby was objecting to paying for"
I think that's being hidden rather well (e.g., Garage's incredibly stupid comment earlier this thread)
We should at least facilitate the voluntary behavior that benefits all of us.
**************
Giving the Feds control over birth control is an excellent idea, but I'd take that further and add adoption services, abortion, surrogacy, infertility treatments, etc...
Because if you make the ability to NOT have kids a free service, I have a feeling the people who want to have kids, but can't, will argue that they deserve the same support. Put every single family planning activity under one big agency.
Once that is in place, increase the penalties for child abuse and neglect to include possible life sentences and sterilization. Because at that point, there would be no excuse - not that there is an excuse now.
I'm all for taking away my choice to pay for a woman's birth control. I mean, if it comes out of my tax dollars I'm not getting to choose that.
As long as women no longer get ton choose not to have sex with me. If I must pay for their birth control then they've got to give a little too.
Its only fair.
How about this: every woman of childbearing age gets a "refundable tax credit" of, say, $500 per year. Those using lower-cost methods of contraception, or none at all, pocket the difference. Those funding a pricier, long-acting method can pay for it over time. Those whose partners pay for a vasectomy can fund that.
No? Why not?
And has anyone seen any numbers on how many women switched to more expensive methods of contraception once they were "free"? Or have insurers instituted controls, such as, generic required unless the doctor certifies that a brand-name is required?
"How NOT having kids benefits life will remain a mystery when we're gone,..."
The benefit is: Women having their children at a time in their life when they have the emotional and financial resources to take good care of the children who will be the future population.
It's far cheaper to facilitate family planning than to endlessly try to compensate for the quality of children's upbringing.
Any given American woman will probably give birth to one or two children, and the question is when. If you start early and unprepared, you'll probably try to do reasonably well, and you're not going to have more children later.
The over-the-counter solution is incomplete because it doesn't include the IUD option. That requires an appointment and costs maybe $1000.
I think these should be free to any American woman who wants one. Government will save money by paying for this.
Althouse, I am concerned you are getting dumber as you get older. That happens muh faster to flaccid, librul minds.
How about we let everyone pay for their own non-essentials including cell phones, mortgages/rent, tattoos, birth control, alcohol, etc?
We already provide contraception for free to women: it's called Medicaid.
It's absurd that I will have to pay for the contraception of women who make 10 times more than I do.
Get it yourself.
If you can't afford it? Okay, I'll gladly help.
If you can afford it? Again, get it yourself and it anyone tries to limit your purchase I will march with you.
I'll march but my wallet stays at home.
All this paternal, free contraceptive talk from the left has got me wondering ... I don't think the pill being available over the counter would solve the issue for them. There is a great focus on IUD availability. Why? I don't think they trust the lower classes to actually follow directions, so they want to get them as close to spayed as possible. Kind of disgusting.
Jeez. The benefit is: Women having their children at a time in their life when they have the emotional and financial resources to take good care of the children who will be the future population.
So now we see Ann in her true state: Control and central planning is better than freedom and chaos. Shorter: stagnation is better than life.
Ann, the problem is most women don't want an IUD, even if it's free. For supposedly being foolproof, I have far too many friends who've had major issues with it---gets lost, falls out, heads up their ovaries, makes them crazy.
How is government saving money for paying for this?
Government doesn't save money, because government isn't concerned with how it spends money, but how it gets more of it to spend.
What a stupid, stupid idea.
People can also fundraise to pay for IUDs that some can't afford.
$500 or $1000 isn't that much to pay for though. I mean, car repairs commonly cost that much. And TVs cost $500.
I recommend that the federal government directly pay for all birth control.
It's not the government's job.
----Perhaps because the policy of free birth control for all bedevils religious people.
Perhaps because as a middle income person I don't want to pay for a product for someone else.
Perhaps because I don't regard the increase of human life to be evil.
Perhaps because I think children should not be sexually active when they don't have the judgement and emotional stability to make it a healthy self=affirming activity.
Perhaps because socialist tyrants want to bedevil religious persons for the fun of it.
----Take employers out of health care completely. But would Wahhabi Lobby let us do that?
Another day another imbecilic, mendacious dribble from garage.
"You know, we ought to be glad that women control their reproductive function to the extent that they do."
Why? Social Security is going bankrupt because of the demographic failure caused by large numbers of women, esp middle class women, "control[ling] their reproductive function."
Althouse wrote:
"The benefit is: Women having their children at a time in their life when they have the emotional and financial resources to take good care of the children who will be the future population.
It's far cheaper to facilitate family planning than to endlessly try to compensate for the quality of children's upbringing. "
Yep, because every generation before the Pill was a complete failure at raising their kids, esp compared to the excellent job the current generations are doing.
"Any given American woman will probably give birth to one or two children, and the question is when."
Basic demographics: you need, on average, at least 2.1 children per woman in order to keep your population from dropping. The later in life, on average, that women have those children, the more your sub-populate decreases against other populations that don't wait until late in life to have kids.
So, other than your ideas being contradicted by both history and math, they're great!
" Personally, I recommend that the federal government directly pay for all birth control. Take the employers, all employers, out of the process of funding birth control and make it a straightforward public health program."
Federal Government = Taxpayer money, includes that from employers and employees and funding the so-called "straightforward public health program".
Prof, you gots yourself a contradiction.
Wheaton College is the school that prohibited married couples from making love standing up, because people might think they were dancing.
I think that's being hidden rather well (e.g., Garage's incredibly stupid comment earlier this thread)
Except most people aren't as dumb as conservative men are when it comes to lady parts, sex, birth control. I can't wait to see fresh polling. Bet it won't be pretty for the GOP.
What we need, what matters most, is a tax on all Residents that will fund Beer Goggle nights once a month at your local watering hole.
It is a small tax, so no bitching, and it will pay for women's drinks if they have sex with the men.
This will help even out the extra benefits paid to women via SS because they take it so easy and live so much longer in their luxurious states of tranquility than menfolk.
Of course in this scenario menfolk will be happy to provide funding for any type of birth control that indeed controls unbirth.
I have solved society's problems and demand nothing more than a "thank you Sir" and cash.
The future is made by those who show up. Ann, have you decided that your cultural group just sucks so much that you don't want them to be part of the future? Is that why you're pushing those policies?
Have government take over the contraception market? Does the professor think we've reached the pinnacle of family planning?
Why does she want to see all improvement in contraception stopped?
Ann and commenters here base arguments on "concern for the future." Every natural person and fictitious person has a concern for the future, lots of which concerns don't involve polluting the world with subsidized Amerikan babies.
The Constitution properly makes no provision for breeding or education of Amerikan babies; why is it that the premise that more Amerikan babies is a good thing goes largely unchallenged here? Especially now that there are loads of literate, potty-trained kids, teenagers, and young adults from South, Central and North America knocking at our doors looking to work!
In neither Texas nor Colorado can I find a teenager ready and willing to mow my lawn, for Chrissake; yet, I can find lots of able-bodied Latinos who will do it for minimum wage. Amerikan kids are worthless--contraception should not only be provided free, but mandated!
EDH @ 10:55,
If that 7.5% AGI limitation you mention is the one at the top os Schd. A, you're behind the times.
It's now 10%. So other things equal, the people who make more money, pay even more federal income tax relative to their health care expenses in order to further help subsidize the health insurance premiums of those who don't.
It's a very slick trick, and I wonder how many of the income tax payers have put 2 plus 2 together.
BTW, I just wanted to note this is the first time I've been entirely in agreement with something I read written by The Crack Emcee. But Comment #1 FTW.
Bob R says:
"I guess you don't have to take a basic econ course to get into law school."
Bob, you should realize that you have to have a degree in poly sci, history or English and be ignorant of STEM and econ to get on the Supreme Court, not to mention that you have to be Roman Catholic or Jewish besides.
Let's face it: What we have in SCOTUS is control by women over their own bodies determined by 5 Roman Catholic men.
I think these (IUDs)should be free to any American woman who wants one
Why?
"We can't force women to use birth control. We should at least facilitate the voluntary behavior that benefits all of us."
In the 21st century, China will not be hegemonic power some have imagined and one of the two major reasons will be their 1-child policies. (The other is their byzantine politics, but that's anther story.)
The population-bomb propaganda of the '60s not withstanding, underpopulation, not overpopulation, is the problem we are beginning to face as baby boomers retire. No government has a logical OR moral reason to subsidize any form of birth control, much less aborifacients, which present their own, separate moral and medical problems.
A. If women don't have babies, they can't collect benefits.
B. The women who are stupid enough to be upset by the rulings already vote Democrat just like the women contemplated by A, above.
Obama needn't break stride in his campaigning/ fundraising.
Use my tax dollars to fund abortion, including abortifacients?
Fuck. That.
Any given American woman will probably give birth to one or two children...
Which is why they're irrelevant. We should be paying for birth control for Mexican women, who will have a dozen or more. They are our future.
Tell you what...I'll vote for free birth control for women if you vote for free game subscriptions, Mountain Dew and Cheesy Poofs for me.
A.A. it's a provocative thought and you framed it in a provocative way (as usual!) I particularly like the idea of birth control that is implanted (IUD or Norplant), since you're not relying on people to swallow that pill or wear that condom. I think the biggest reason for birth control failures--and we have an unplanned pregnancy every 10 seconds--is pilot error.
I think these should be free to any American woman who wants one. Government will save money by paying for this.
The more I think about it, the more I think you're right. Welfare is expensive. Free birth control is a lot cheaper than welfare payments. Even an IUD or Norplant is far cheaper than five years of welfare payments for a child. And the normal Republican response to welfare resentment ("get a job!") doesn't work with kids. We can't insist that a child go to work or support themselves.
You got my vote.
Althouse: The benefit is: Women having their children at a time in their life when they have the emotional and financial resources to take good care of the children who will be the future population.
It's far cheaper to facilitate family planning than to endlessly try to compensate for the quality of children's upbringing.
Nice theory. That's rhetoric from the '60s and '70s. How's it working out in reality?
Considering that the explosion in illegitimacy rates (and consequent dependence on other government programs) coincides with increasing access to taxpayer-subsidized "reproductive services", don't you think that this whole "every child a wanted - and supportable - child" needs a bit of a re-think?
I'm guessing that the class of "[w]omen having their children at a time in their life when they have the emotional and financial resources to take good care of the children" would be doing that regardless of the availability of subsidized contraceptives or abortions. The class of women who would not behave responsibly absent social stigma doesn't seem to be behaving according to theory, regardless of the fact that cheap or free services are already widely available.
To put it crudely, just how much free shit do some people need before they are supposed to be able to think about their available "emotional and financial resources" like adults? How 'bout calculating the "cost savings" of allowing the responsible to put their resources into their own children, or - gasp - having more children? The "future population" ought to comprise more than the offspring of cowbirds.
Some of these Supreme Court decisions of late reminds me of the time we were going to write a constitution and bylaws for our sportscar club. Somehow the membership got onto defining the term "sportscar," and then to deciding when a Corvair would qualify, and they were into saying that would if it was a Monza with bucket seats, manual transmission, and twin fender-mounted rearview mirrors, and I said: "Are you listening to yourselves, people? Twin fender-mounted rearview mirrors?"
So, they thought about it, and finally decided that a sportscar was any car you would drive just for the fun of it, and perhaps it would be best to not say anything about it at all in either constitution or bylaws.
The over-the-counter solution is incomplete because it doesn't include the IUD option. That requires an appointment and costs maybe $1000. I think these should be free to any American woman who wants one.
Yea, so tough shit for those wanting an IUD.
Where do you even the idea that any of it should be paid for by tax money, instead of the person using it?
Government will save money by paying for this.
Assumes facts not in evidence. Like most progressive notions.
What benefit do women without male partners receive? This includes but is not limited to homosexuals.
Abortion. Contraception. Masturbation. Equality.
I would suggest that Obama continue on his course and practice selective exclusion. After all, what difference do principles make? We already know the selective value he assigns to a "burden".
Since when do Progressives give a shit about saving money?
The problem is women not using birth control, even when it is available to them.
Watch teen mom. They all chose not to use any birth control. Even though they had it available and knew to use it. They just didn't.
Free birth control doesn't stop irresponsible people, who sadly continue to make irresponsible parents.
A.A.'s argument is made by Max Fisher in The Atlantic, along with some numbers.
Spending $235 million on family planning would save $1.32 billion
I'm not sure where they get those numbers. My mind was kind of blown by this government chart, which seems to say that we spent $523 billion on welfare last year. That's $291 billion on family and children, another $148 billion on unemployment, and $83 billion on housing. These are billions with a B. I hope that's a mistake. All those zeroes makes my head spin.
Obama will respond to this as divisively as possible one would imagine. They need to keep those women all riled up. What better way than to add fuel to this fire before the mid terms. The obama crowd could have truly worked for a work around if they were interested, but wanted to have a fight with Christians. Well they got one, but maybe not at the time that will help them.
You've lost me, Professor.
You say the government should give any woman an IUD, if she wants one, and each will cost $1,000, and this should be done because, at least in part, it will save money in the long run.
Sounds like eugenics to me.
As a federal taxpayer I suppose it's just fine for the Federal government as part of "a perfectly wholesome federal policy" to provide free birth control pills and such to all women. Maybe we sjould all just suck it up and say "that's okay", since the poor woman probably couldn't afford her cell phone bill without free birth control pills.
As a male, I might like an equal monthly allowance for say a six pack of craft beer. Helps the mental state don't you know.
But we've had all the judicial and political wars about whether taxpayers should be forced to pay for state or federal subsidized abortions. And indeed, once the federal camel's regulatory nose is under the tent, on demand federally subsidized abortions are on the way.
Back in my law school days (late 60's at Boalt Hall) my wife and I were living on her earnings (as a social worker) of $600 a month or so. I applied for, and won, a scholarship. In my application I was required to list all of our monthly expenses. Being literally minded, I did just that. One of the line items in the "expense" section was the cost of birth control pills. Great hilarity ensued at a subsequent Law Review dinner when my Civil Procedure professor asserted that mine was the only scholarship application he'd seen which listed birth control pills as an expense.
You see Ms. Fluke--some of us paid for our own. And if my wife and I could do that, I don't see why you and your ilk can't do it as well.
Democrats have a compelling interest to reduce the problem set. However, that doesn't explain why they favor displacing and replacing Americans with legal and illegal aliens. There must be a sympathetic interest between the Democrat elites and their minority bases. Perhaps an interest shared with foreign leaders and nationals.
Agreed. Contraception is part of a woman's medical care with her doctor. Why should an employer have a right to interfere with that but not with an employee who chooses to take an antibiotic for a strep throat?
What the Taliban GOP is really saying is they want to interfere in peoples' personal lives as is dictated by their fundamentalist Christianity. No different than the Taliban, just without the soccer stadium executions.
The over-the-counter solution is incomplete because it doesn't include the IUD option. That requires an appointment and costs maybe $1000.
I think these should be free to any American woman who wants one. Government will save money by paying for this.
It's this or pay $100K in welfare for a kid to 18 years old.
Clearly women are helpless, and will always find themselves at the mercy of the stronger sex.
Men pursue, women submit.
Women need free birth control, men can keep it in their pants.
This is a disgusting underhanded way by white leftists(Fluke) of
trying to prevent minorities from reproducing.
Fluke is the modern day Margaret Sanger.
All women who get free contraceptives will have an obligation to put out to taxpayers. If I pay for your vagina needs, I also dance it. Fair is fair, your vagina is a public resource now.
"I'm sorry to see that women, even learned women such as yourself and justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg have difficulty wrapping your brains around the notion that the role of a judge is to apply the law -- in this case RFRA. If RFRA is too much for you, then get it repealed."
It still has to be applied, and the difference of opinion is about what counts as a substantial burden on religion. In Wheaton College the college doesn't want to fill out a govt form invoking the accommodation.
Actually I am in favor of such. After all there is: A slight majority of the unborn who are female; AND, the use of abortion to illegally "screen out" females is growing even in the USA.
Am I "waging war on females"?
I am the government -- no.
I don't blame Wheaton College at all, what does the form say? Is it like the form the nuns have to sign?
It's just a form, so innocuous, right? What harm?
Lololol
Of course, political advantage will be taken. This issue is served up nicely for Democrats. What can Republicans do? Personally, I recommend that the federal government directly pay for all birth control.
I haven't even thought about the politics. To me the policy that Althouse suggests is a good one, based simply on cost-savings.
But politically speaking, it's pure gold for Republicans. Imagine a pro-life Republican who took this attitude!
"I support free government birth control for every woman who wants it. And I believe we should recognize the humanity of the unborn child and make it a crime for people to kill a baby in the womb."
The left has been demonizing the right for years on birth control. They talk about abortion as if it's the same as birth control. They talk about a "war on women." You are now immune to all that. You can make clear that you are protecting babies. You're fighting for free birth control. And, simultaneously, you are cutting the budget deficit by billions of dollars. This is like a win-win-win-win for Republicans.
Ummm, contraception is a part of women's medical care with her doctor?
Can't go buy condoms? Can't get a headache, can't control themselves? Can't go to planned parenthood, their local high school or college? That stuff is free.
jimbino: In neither Texas nor Colorado can I find a teenager ready and willing to mow my lawn, for Chrissake; yet, I can find lots of able-bodied Latinos who will do it for minimum wage.
The Latinos mowing your lawn can't support themselves on the wages you're paying, much less support the children they're having - all on the public dime. Scratch a "liberatarian" and find a parasite with a godzilla-sized sense of entitlement, looking to have his labor costs subsidized.
Mow your own damned lawn, you lazy free-riding piece of shit.
Althouse wrote -
"Any given American woman will probably give birth to one or two children..."
Now that's funny. At that rate, bye bye current American stock. Althouse probably thinks "two" is replacement level.
I won't even touch the liberal educated class conscience elements of your statement.
Better be prepared to write that unfettered immigration post Althouse. It will go hand in hand.
I do not think the 1st Amendment says anything about "substantial burdens."
Am I mistaken about this?
"We should at least facilitate the voluntary behavior that benefits all of us." Hobby lobby already paid for 16 types of birth control. Who knew that Althouse was Sandra Fluke.
It still has to be applied, and the difference of opinion is about what counts as a substantial burden on religion. In Wheaton College the college doesn't want to fill out a govt form invoking the accommodation.
If I opposed capital punishment, I would not sign a death warrant, either.
Hobby Lobby denied 4 types of abortifacients. Since most people will use birth control and not the morning after pill for birth control, we go by the stats. Birth control is good 85-95% of the time.
Hobby Lobby covers this birth control and gives it for FREE already.
So, lets get to the morning after pill. You are not going to be using it daily since birthcontrol will cover you 85-95% of the time.
So how many times will you need it because you got pregnant? Once, twice tops?
How much is the morning after pill by the way. With insurcance planned parenthood says it costs 10 to 30 dollars.
Without insurance it costs 10 to 70 dollars. So forty dollars.
And this is the argument the left wants to hinge the war on women on.
Also, if we are going to give out free medication, why would we start with birth control when we could give out medication that actually keeps people alive. Why not make asthma medication free, or heart medication.
Whenever I got sick and had to get medicine I had to pay a portion of the bill. SHoudn't I have gotten some free stuff?
Saint Croix wrote:
The left has been demonizing the right for years on birth control. They talk about abortion as if it's the same as birth control. They talk about a "war on women." You are now immune to all that. You can make clear that you are protecting babies.
isn't that Hobby Lobby's position? YEs to 16 types of birth control, no to abortifacients. It isn't stopping libs from bringing up the War On Women angle.
Althouse wrote:
It's ridiculous that we've stumbled into a position where this perfectly wholesome governmental policy is bedeviling religious people.
Not Hobby Lobby, since Hobby Lobby gave out free birth control. What they drew a line on were abortifacients.
"Take the employers, all employers, out of the process of funding birth control and make it a straightforward public health program."
Or, you could go to a CVS and buy condoms birth control and morning after pills relatively cheaply without insurance. Under age girls don't even need their parents persmission to get the MA pill.
I think Althouse would agree there is no "war on women." This is a phony and dishonest media attack on Republicans. But there is a silent and unmentioned war on babies. They are the ones who are decapitated and dismembered.
One might add that there are many men who are sitting in prison because of their inability to pay child support. For babies they did not want to have.
I beg the Republican party to think seriously about Althouse's proposal. You need to make yourself immune to the "war on women" charge, if you are going to fight the pro-life cause seriously. I would like to see a moral crusade to stop the infanticides. And if you need to provide free birth control in pragmatic fashion to make this happen, by all means provide free birth control.
I think free birth control would decimate the abortion industry. It would take much of the left's identify politics off the table. And it makes economic sense, too, drastically limiting the amount of money we have to spend on welfare, subsidized housing, and food stamps. It's billions in savings.
"Sounds like eugenics to me."
Shhh! Not so loud. How about if we just call it "The public health program that dare not speak its name"?
I don't know that govt should give it away for free. But could govt offer a subsidy on it so you could buy it cheaper? (IUD's). maybe, it depends on whether they are considered abortifacients.
Since all programs are tax payer funded, could religious folks argue they would still be paying for abortifacients if govt took over profiding them?
angelyne wrote:
The Latinos mowing your lawn can't support themselves on the wages you're paying, much less support the children they're having - all on the public dime. Scratch a "liberatarian" and find a parasite with a godzilla-sized sense of entitlement, looking to have his labor costs subsidized.
He's not paying UNDER the minimum wage. What are you complaining about? IF they raised the minimum wage to 10,10 an hour a lot of people STILL couldn't afford to live where they are.
Who knew that Althouse was Sandra Fluke.
Sandra Fluke talked about birth control as an entitlement. That annoys conservatives. Of course it annoys conservatives. She talked about a "war on women." She's an idiot. I dismissed her out of hand.
Althouse has mocked the "war on women" meme, from the beginning. She does not think birth control is an entitlement and is not arguing it's an entitlement.
It's a pragmatic argument, economically sound, and one people in both parties could and should support. Maybe Roman Catholics would oppose it, since Roman Catholics think birth control is a sin. But I know Catholics understand the important difference between birth control and abortion. Republicans should utterly and completely divide birth control from abortion. Griswold is good and fine; Roe v. Wade is evil and must be stopped.
Pick your battles. Think strategically. I know there are conservatives who are dismayed at the idea of giving away free stuff to citizens. But if you can shrink welfare payments and the size of the government, why is that bad?
I favor free public education. It's an investment in our future. It's like a corporation spending money on research and development.
Free birth control is another expenditure I support. It's a cost-cutting measure. If it works as I think it will, you will shrink welfare payments and crime.
Conservatives have been talking forever about the awful societal costs when we destroy the family. 40% of births are to single moms now. Dads are sent to prison for failure to pay child support. Babies are knifed or poisoned. Wake up to the reality of what is going on, and fix the problem. I like Althouse's suggestion very much.
Get rid of the dole for never married single moms. That'll save s shit ton of money.
It will also force young women to accept responsibility for their sexual choices. Like they say they want to do.
Human life evolves from conception to death. Murder is the willful, premature termination of human evolution. Elective abortion is an act of premeditated murder. Sustained abortion of several million human lives annually is the violation of human rights on an unprecedented scale.
That said, I can understand why your kind do not appreciate this fact. That they find it inconvenient. That they may even take pleasure in it. Hopefully, the majority of human beings are not psychotic; but, if history offers any insight, it is that a depraved minority can wage war on a population and humanity.
Make love, not war.
Make life, not abortion/murder.
This debate is purportedly about contraception; but, for the libertines, it is about the unfettered right/choice to commit abortion/murder of a wholly innocent human life. Shades of regression.
I don't want to think about women having sex....gross.
The vagina is so nasty-looks like something that will grap your hog and choke the life out of it.
Saint Croix:
We could lower taxes, provide a higher standard of living, for all Americans, and balance the budget, by decimating the multitiered social complex. Not only would a simple, flat distribution be more effective than the diverse elements of the social bureaucracy; but, it would reduce the rate of progressive corruption and moral degradation. It will never happen, because it would undermine the leverage they enjoy.
Let's see, insanity is repeating the same action and hoping for a different outcome, right?
It's not possible to have a rational debate about human rights with people who are either unwilling or incapable of acknowledging human evolution from conception to death.
It's not possible to have a rational debate about civil rights with people who are either unwilling or incapable of recognizing their advocacy for selective exclusion.
It's not possible to enjoy liberty when people will not accept responsibility for their behavior, which is why children, immature adults, and criminals have their liberty implicitly and explicitly constrained.
There are zones of intersexed fish downstream of many major metropolitan areas due to all the artificial hormones in the wastewater due to "this perfectly wholesome governmental policy".
Why do I have the feeling that this would be a bigger deal if it was because of, e.g., PCBs instead of "birth control" pills...
Free contraception to every woman sounds a great deal like that idea of giving every school child a free computer.
And once again for Althouse: we give free contraception to women. It's part of every state's Medicaid program. The federal government contributes to these programs.
Now we need to give free contraception to women who already have it?
No means testing?
Women want to be treated, as they should, as equals to men. Legally and socially.
How is this going to achieve that goal?
Men have a word for other men who can't provide their own contraception.
They are called boys.
I think the right-wing reaction to Sandra Fluke is a problem with framing.
Sandra Fluke is a beautiful woman, right? Here is Sandra Fluke in a bar.
Sandra Fluke: "Buy me dinner."
Me: "What?"
Sandra Fluke: "You owe me. I'm entitled to dinner. Buy me dinner now."
Me: "No thanks."
Sandra Fluke: "This is a war on women."
Me: "What?"
Sandra Fluke: "Misogyny! Misogyny! Potential rapist!"
The woman comes across as deranged. She thinks birth control is an entitlement. I owe her birth control. And then she tries to extort birth control from me by calling me names. "Oh, Georgetown is so evil, I had to buy my own birth control."
But if she was a normal woman, who didn't think I owed her anything, and we had a good conversation and I really liked her, I would buy the birth control. Of course I'd buy the birth control. You think I'd get into an argument about who is paying for the birth control?
In other words, if you have a smart person (i.e. Althouse) arguing for free birth control provided by the state, and you have the budget numbers to back up the savings, and you don't demonize Republicans but seek their votes, too, suddenly the policy makes a great deal of sense. I mean, birth control is a good idea on a personal level, but there are also benefits on a society-wide level. Why not have that discussion without acrimony?
You wrote, "I recommend that the federal government directly pay for all birth control."
But you meant, "I recommend that the taxpayers directly pay for all birth control."
That's twice this weekend I've had to point out to you that the government has no money. Everything it spends comes from taxpayers, who did not freely choose to hand it over.
Anglelyne said...
jimbino: In neither Texas nor Colorado can I find a teenager ready and willing to mow my lawn, for Chrissake; yet, I can find lots of able-bodied Latinos who will do it for minimum wage.
The Latinos mowing your lawn can't support themselves on the wages you're paying, much less support the children they're having - all on the public dime. Scratch a "liberatarian" and find a parasite with a godzilla-sized sense of entitlement, looking to have his labor costs subsidized.
Mow your own damned lawn, you lazy free-riding piece of shit.
7/5/14, 3:33 PM
Angelyne for the win! You said it, sister. As a lifelong worker in the construction/landscape industry, this jimbino guy's attitude really pisses me off. These jackholes run down to the parking lot of the local Home Depots to collect some illegal aliens to mow their damn lawns or clean their houses or plant their flowers because they're too fucking lazy or incompetent to do it themselves or too fucking cheap to pay for a man who makes it his business to do these things, and they've got the balls to say they can't find any American kids/workers to do it. The bigotry of these asswipers just floors me. The reason we have the plague of illegal aliens that we do is so that middle class people can have servants.
My youngest daughter's pill prescription is a whopping $9.90 a month. My oldest gets hers free from planned parenthood.
What is the problem again?
"How should Obama respond to Hobby Lobby and Wheaton College?"
First we'd need to know when the President's tee times are next week.
1 – 121 of 121
Forcing people in their capacity as employers to pay for something against their conscience is not ok.
So... let's force people in their capacity as taxpaying citizens to pay for the exact same thing!
Never mind that the thing in question is available and affordable to anyone sensible. We have to make sure that, at the end of the day, the people who are conscientious objectors have to pay in the end.
To the liberal metaphor of "I can spend your money better than you can", you've just added the implicit truth that always gets added onto it "I'm in power so I can be a dick about it."
It still has to be applied, and the difference of opinion is about what counts as a substantial burden on religion.
I could point out that by a 2:1 margin the Supreme Court decided that signing the paper was a substantial burden and Sotomayor, Ginsberg, and Kagan are merely playing the sore loser. But instead I will ask who is to decide what is a "substantial burden on religion" if not the conscience of the individual? Otherwise what stops an external authority from insisting that it's no substantial burden to Jews and Moslems to eat pork, or for Methodists to use real wine for communion?
And me an atheist. Hie thee back to church, Professor. Hie thee back to church. Your conscience is waiting for you in one of the pews, I promise.
Ann Althouse said...
"How NOT having kids benefits life will remain a mystery when we're gone,..."
The benefit is: Women having their children at a time in their life when they have the emotional and financial resources to take good care of the children who will be the future population.
It's far cheaper to facilitate family planning than to endlessly try to compensate for the quality of children's upbringing.
7/5/14, 12:49 PM "
Get rid of welfare instead. That will make her more cautious about banging deadbeats who won't pay for her birth control or child support. It's a hell of a lot less expensive not to subsidize the foolish to begin with.
averagejoe said...
Anglelyne said...
jimbino: In neither Texas nor Colorado can I find a teenager ready and willing to mow my lawn, for Chrissake; yet, I can find lots of able-bodied Latinos who will do it for minimum wage.
The Latinos mowing your lawn can't support themselves on the wages you're paying, much less support the children they're having - all on the public dime. Scratch a "liberatarian" and find a parasite with a godzilla-sized sense of entitlement, looking to have his labor costs subsidized.
Mow your own damned lawn, you lazy free-riding piece of shit.
7/5/14, 3:33 PM
Angelyne for the win! You said it, sister. As a lifelong worker in the construction/landscape industry, this jimbino guy's attitude really pisses me off. These jackholes run down to the parking lot of the local Home Depots to collect some illegal aliens to mow their damn lawns or clean their houses or plant their flowers because they're too fucking lazy or incompetent to do it themselves or too fucking cheap to pay for a man who makes it his business to do these things, and they've got the balls to say they can't find any American kids/workers to do it. The bigotry of these asswipers just floors me. The reason we have the plague of illegal aliens that we do is so that middle class people can have servants.
7/5/14, 5:18 PM"
Get rid of welfare and let the deadbeats do the servant's work.
Saint Croix and anyone else advocating the cost benefit approach,
If only the analysis translated to facts on the ground. If everyone were post teenage upper middle class or better economically mobile or already comfortable Americans like those who actually author these analyses and set policy, then perhaps these predicted outcomes might come to pass. But most Americans, at least those whose behaviour the analysis requires, are not.
We are going on fifty years of the "pill," family planning, school sex education, additional contraceptive options (apparently 20), legal access to abortion, and prices declining to less than fast food levels. Where's the improvement. Some might say things have gotten worse.
You can put any minimal cost you want against the potential giant benefit. But in this case the benefit never materializes regardless of the cost.
Althouse: It still has to be applied, and the difference of opinion is about what counts as a substantial burden on religion. In Wheaton College the college doesn't want to fill out a govt form invoking the accommodation.
You're digging a deeper hole. Wheaton doesn't want to fill out the form because that means they are agreeing to provide information of the people who want to use those abortion drugs. "Mail them to this address"
If "we want you to kill Bob" is morally objectionable, then so is "we want you to tell us where Bob is so we can kill him".
In either case, you are complicit in Bob's death.
I also thought Sotowhatever was supposed to be a "wise latina". Not so much it seems.
Have you even read the Wheaton decision? I'm kinda suprised to missed the basis of their objection. Or did you read it and delibertely mislead us here?
I have yet to hear of a woman who works at Hobby Lobby lamenting that the company won't buy their chosen form birth control. But I hear a lot of liberals decrying that it could happen.
Conservatives have been talking forever about the awful societal costs when we destroy the family. 40% of births are to single moms now. Dads are sent to prison for failure to pay child support. Babies are knifed or poisoned. Wake up to the reality of what is going on, and fix the problem. I like Althouse's suggestion very much.
I understand your point St. Croix, but the truth is, free birth control wouldn't stop the scourge of out of wedlock births. These pregnancies among the lower classes are "unplanned," but not unplanned. This article might have been blogged about by Althouse earlier, I'm not sure how I came upon it, but the reasoning seems to match what I've seen in my own life.
Alex: "Contraception is part of a woman's medical care with her doctor. Why should an employer have a right to interfere with that but not with an employee who chooses to take an antibiotic for a strep throat?"
Because he has a moral objection to paying for an abortion. He's cool with killing viruses though.
I swear, some of you people are just plain stupid.
Saint Croix wrote:
Pick your battles. Think strategically. I know there are conservatives who are dismayed at the idea of giving away free stuff to citizens. But if you can shrink welfare payments and the size of the government, why is that bad?
Because we don'tknow that it would in fact shrink welfare payments.
Saint Croix wrote:
It's a pragmatic argument, economically sound, and one people in both parties could and should support. Maybe Roman Catholics would oppose it, since Roman Catholics think birth control is a sin. But I know Catholics understand the important difference between birth control and abortion. Republicans should utterly and completely divide birth control from abortion. Griswold is good and fine; Roe v. Wade is evil and must be stopped.
Didn't Hobby Lobby do that by distinguishing birth control from abortifacients? If you want birth control, Hobby Lobby is providing already. Aren't IUD's abortifacients though? Then we'd be back at the exact same issue as before.
Saint Croix wrote:
In other words, if you have a smart person (i.e. Althouse) arguing for free birth control provided by the state, and you have the budget numbers to back up the savings, and you don't demonize Republicans but seek their votes, too, suddenly the policy makes a great deal of sense. I mean, birth control is a good idea on a personal level, but there are also benefits on a society-wide level. Why not have that discussion without acrimony?
why not have that discussion without acrimony? Well, who are we having the discussion with? The Sandra Fluke party.
The War On Women Democrats.
"How NOT having kids benefits life will remain a mystery when we're gone,..."
It's a short term versus long term thing. Short term, not having kids gives you more money and time to spend on yourself. Long term, you run out of people who can pay for the social services we will all need when we get older. Really long term, societies tend to perish.
Saint Croix, Sandra Fluke is simply saying what Althouse is saying in a more obnoxious manner. But it's the same argument. While I'm sure a lot of people responded to Fluke because she came across like an entitled idiot, there were many also who disagreed with the merit of her argument.
And we all know nothing is free. So giving out free stuff doesn't actually mean we're not paying for it. It would be an experiment, but the idea that would see money back in the form of less welfare payments is dubious. Especially when you consider who is in the White House.
It's ridiculous that we've stumbled into a position where this perfectly wholesome governmental policy is bedeviling religious people.
Facetious, are we???
Anyhow...
'Twas not as you present it, Althouse. The idea of the present government goes much deeper... into the notion that, eh, if we just get these organizations out of the non-profit pool and in to the for-profit pool, then we'll be able to regulate them by Executive proclamation as we see fit.
Such was the the intent of an Executive memorandum that is yet to surface in the press... Steer everything possible towards the identity of for-profit corporation, it said... it did not say part two... which was that the Executive would like to do what it wants with these for-profit corporations because they're just money-grubbers (or can easily be portrayed as money-grubbers) anyway. Fill in the blank, YO! It's campaign finance, YO!
Problem is that while Part #1 was put into full force via the IRS (Lerner? Lerner? Channeling Bueller...) w.r.t. everything from "educational organizations" to open-source software, Part #2 was just struck down as a no-can-do by the SCOTUS.
So... back to y'er post, or at least the non-facetious parts: Team Obama has a P.R. problem. They need to do something for the general Democratic public. Toss them a bone, as you might say.... But, eh, whatever... Their real agenda was something else, and that something else is a little too intricate for NBC Nightly News or ThinkProgress.com headlines.
Toss a bone or not, what the Executive certainly ain't gonna do is anything that might point toward the revelation of their for-profit=we-can-regulate-it agenda. This is, after all, the explosive stuff that makes hard drives spontaneously combust.
Come to think of it... Tossing a bone might be an effective distraction... Go that way, Drudge... Go that way, Issa... They might take the bait. Worth a try, anyhow...
jr565: He's not paying UNDER the minimum wage. What are you complaining about? IF they raised the minimum wage to 10,10 an hour a lot of people STILL couldn't afford to live where they are.
Way to completely miss the point there, jr. Hint: it's not about the minimum wage.
She is joking, right? Maybe forced sterilization might solve the problem?
Or if that is too harsh, maybe reeducation camps for Christians to teach them to be more compassionate?
I can't believe there is a debate over a $10 a month item. Women are so gullible.
Ann Althouse said...
It still has to be applied, and the difference of opinion is about what counts as a substantial burden on religion. In Wheaton College the college doesn't want to fill out a govt form invoking the accommodation.
Oh, come on, Ann, you can't possibly be that dumb, so why are you being that dishonest?
If Wheaton College fills out the form, then their insurance provider will still buy those contraceptives for women under the Wheaton College paid for health insurance plan. THAT is why Wheaton refuses to fill out the form.
We must combine birth control with weight reduction/appetite suppression additives as well as Soma from the Huxley work. We know what we are doing with womens' hormones, to the extent it is beyond science and lawful tradition.
Everybody needs to think about the trillions of dollars Obama has run up the debt. That's trillions with a T. And he got elected by alleging that Republicans hated women. Now Althouse is suggesting that Republicans support a policy that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. That's millions with an M. This policy would save billions of dollars and, if it keeps the hard left out of the White House, it would actually save us trillions of dollars. So excuse me for my pragmatism, but I see that as millions well spent.
Congratulations Althousians,
The fat troll has gone from annoying to irrelevant. Good job in dealing with garbage,
For to the amusing troll known as Titus, I would respond that some of my best experiences have been when a vagina grabbed my hog and nearly choked the life out of it. :-))
Average Joe says:
"The reason we have the plague of illegal aliens that we do is so that middle class people can have servants."
The plague we suffer is not that of "illegal aliens" but of Amerikan brood. Why should we pay to pop out and mis-educate Amerikan brats when we can get better and cheaper help?
I am Hispanic myself, I mow my own lawn, and I always pay workers almost double the minimum wage. In any case, Angelyne and Middling Joe, you must know it's illegal to discriminate against workers on the basis of race, ethnicity or origin.
If there's so much youth unemployment in the USSA, why aren't anglo kids standing around at 7am at Home Depot?
I think these should be free to any American woman who wants one. Government will save money by paying for this.
Professor, if that was true, insurance would have covered it regardless. They have people whose job is to crunch the numbers to see if something will cost them or save them money. I'll take the opinion of anonymous geeks crunching these numbers over political hacks.
It does not save money. Pills are covered and then women will decide to get pregnant, so they have to pay for that as well.
There is no financial benefit in covering contraceptive unless the woman NEVER gets pregnant. Otherwise, it is just an ADDED cost.
If you want me out of your bedroom, you don't get to use my wallet to fund the activities.
It still has to be applied, and the difference of opinion is about what counts as a substantial burden on religion. In Wheaton College the college doesn't want to fill out a govt form invoking the accommodation.
Is it common for groups to have to sign government approved forms to exercise Constitutional freedoms? That doesn't seem a bit odd to you?
But if you can shrink welfare payments and the size of the government, why is that bad?
BECAUSE it does not work.
Period.
What would stop a woman from getting the $1,000 for an IUD, having it removed early, getting pregnant, and then getting another IUD after that?
Keep in mind my hypothetical is markedly more likely to occur than your hypothetical.
Sandra Fluke is a beautiful woman, right?
In what alternate universe?
In other words, if you have a smart person (i.e. Althouse) arguing for free birth control provided by the state, and you have the budget numbers to back up the savings, and you don't demonize Republicans but seek their votes, too, suddenly the policy makes a great deal of sense. I mean, birth control is a good idea on a personal level, but there are also benefits on a society-wide level. Why not have that discussion without acrimony?
You seem to confuse "dude who wants to fuck a chick" for "a logical argument".
If a guy is fucking a girl, then yes, he should contribute.
Unless I personally am fucking her, I have no obligation to give her anything.
would respond that some of my best experiences have been when a vagina grabbed my hog and nearly choked the life out of it. :-))
Dude, you wouldn't know what a vagina felt like if one slapped you upside the face. Of course this is the hidden frustration for many pasty middle-aged white conservatives like you. Why should women receive birth control? You'll never benefit from it.
Angeline wrote:
Way to completely miss the point there, jr. Hint: it's not about the minimum wage.
what I meant was, at least he's paying the mimimum wage. Most people who hire illegals to be their maids don't even bother to pay that much.so at least you can say that much about him. He's paying the bare minimum.
I'm surprised that no one has brought up the plight of unattractive women. Employers should be required to provide men for them as well.
We are going on fifty years of the "pill," family planning, school sex education, additional contraceptive options (apparently 20), legal access to abortion, and prices declining to less than fast food levels. Where's the improvement. Some might say things have gotten worse.
Pro-lifers talk about the "stick," making abortion illegal again, defining it as a homicide. It might be easier to win this fight if we include a "carrot," free birth control. And not just free birth control, but of the high-end surgical kind (Norplant and IUD). What I like about these forms of birth control is that you remove pilot error.
I think one of the big problems is alcohol. Drunk people don't use birth control. But if you're implanted with birth control, that's not a problem anymore.
Even if the cost savings are illusory (I suspect not), you've pulled a Clinton triangulation on the left and the cost savings of getting Obama and his ilk out of power is serious money. Hundreds of millions of dollars is a lot of money to you and me but in our federal budget it's hardly a drop.
Study here showing abortion rates dropping quite a lot when birth control is free.
Abortion. Contraception. Masturbation. Equality.
ACME!
You seem to confuse "dude who wants to fuck a chick" for "a logical argument".
If a guy is fucking a girl, then yes, he should contribute.
Unless I personally am fucking her, I have no obligation to give her anything.
That's a thing of beauty right there.
Because the truth is beautiful.
The benefit is: Women having their children at a time in their life when they have the emotional and financial resources to take good care of the children who will be the future population.
It's far cheaper to facilitate family planning than to endlessly try to compensate for the quality of children's upbringing.
Sound's good and logical, doesn't it? Except, of course, that it is wrong. As pointed out above, if this were actually true, then insurance companies would go out of their way to supply free birth control.
We have a woman, maybe 30 or so, attending a $50,000 a year law school, telling us that she can't afford the contraception required for recreational sex. The slight of hand is that Ann is first essentially talking about the 16 year old minorities getting pregnant, often in order to get welfare themselves. And, then that is generalized to include Sandra Flake, at the $50k a year law school. Where condoms are apparently sitting around in big bowls, free. But, not good enough for all those aspiring attorneys, despite actually preventing diseases.
There is really little evidence that postponing childbearing a couple years later in their mid-20s or later will actually help women long run in their careers. The statistics are heavily slanted by including the 16 year olds who never graduate from high school. And, indeed, it might be better career wise to get it out of the way, at least the most time consuming parts of child rearing. But, one thing that using contraceptives in a woman's 20s and 30s does do is reduce her statistical lifetime fertility, which means that the longer she waits to start a family, the less likely she is going to be able to have as many children as she wished for. So, she may be trading 4 kids at 16 for 2.2 kids at 24, for maybe 1.1 kids at 34. Yes, she can afford to send those 1.1 kids to private school, etc. But, in the end, she will be depending on other women's children for her retirement.
The thing is, that there just aren't that many women in their 20s and 30s who would be getting pregnant (as a result of their recreational sex) who can't afford their own birth control, are not on, or eligible for, Medicaid, and won't/can't use condoms. Yes, they all aren't Sandra Flake, but they all should be responsible for their own actions (in this case, recreational sex). Which leave the teenagers, who are likely eligible for Medicaid if they and their families cannot afford birth control - except for many of them, either they consciously decided to get pregnant, or they naively got pregnant, neither of which would benefit from free contraceptives.
It still comes down to the reality that there really aren't that many women who would benefit from free contraceptives (outside of Medicaid), can't afford them, and are engaging in recreational sex. Which is why it seems so obvious to so many that this is purely a political payoff to single women for voting for Obama and the Dems.
And, as others above have pointed out - this involves recreational sex, not procreative sex. Why not subsidize other recreational activities, like beer and pot? Season passes at ski areas? And, why not just use condoms? They at least have the ability to prevent diseases.
Saint Croix:
It will not work because their demands are progressive. Besides, the issue is not contraception, but abortion. They want both, but especially the latter.
They will never acknowledge intrinsic value, which would infringe on individual dreams of money, sex, and convenience; on group dreams of reducing the problem set (i.e. population control); and on government's dreams of taxable activity and control.
It is illogical to compromise with people who adhere to selective or negotiable natural and moral principles. They create moral hazards as a matter of policy, which denigrates individual dignity, devalues human life, and corrupts objective standards. Compromise with immoral individuals only delays and exacerbates the consequences of reconciliation.
Ann Althouse,
"The benefit is: Women having their children at a time in their life when they have the emotional and financial resources to take good care of the children who will be the future population."
You're avoiding instilling maturity, in an ethical society, as an answer. I guarantee you, making killing appear "practical" isn't a step in that direction.
"It's far cheaper to facilitate family planning than to endlessly try to compensate for the quality of children's upbringing."
First, we shouldn't judge the value of social endeavors by how cheap they come and, second, we wouldn't have to "endlessly try to compensate for the quality" of anything if we valued human life enough to bring some justice to the families of those young mothers in the first place. The rest is a distraction from doing what needs to be done. That's why black women don't join white feminists:
They take their eyes off the ball.
Centuries of wealth in the hands of those it belongs to - that's the quality-of-life solution to black unwed pregnancies. Not a condom that comes with a wink-and-a-nudge, or warnings of Jesus' moral outrage, but babies born in an ethical world they can happily grow up believing in like everyone else - but without the lies and omissions. A good country.
The opposite of poverty is justice,...
Saint Croix:
Actually, I would support and advise universal conception prevention; but only if it was accompanied with a constitutional amendment which confirmed The Declaration of Independence's assignment of rights from "Creation". Not birth, but conception, when human evolution begins.
Actually, the amendment has to be passed first. We know the value of libertine promises. It would be illogical to trust them yet again. Progressive morality is an oxymoron.
We can't force women to use birth control. We should at least facilitate the voluntary behavior that benefits all of us. It's ridiculous that we've stumbled into a position where this perfectly wholesome governmental policy is bedeviling religious people.
Oh I don't know about that. We certainly could forcibly sterilize every woman upon reaching puberty. And only upon reaching a certain age, education level, employment level, housing level, along with an associates degree in child rearing would the necessary pregnancy license be issued, and the sterilization legally (and temporarily) be reversed.
Just think how this policy would benefit us all.
That's all the rationalization you needed to reach into my wallet, so It's all the rationalization I need to reach into your vagina.
That's all the rationalization you needed to reach into my wallet, so It's all the rationalization I need to reach into your vagina.
Speaking of Hillary! elsewhere, I think she's OK with the reaching into wallets thing for birth control because It Takes A Pillage.
jimbino said...
Average Joe says:
"The reason we have the plague of illegal aliens that we do is so that middle class people can have servants."
The plague we suffer is not that of "illegal aliens" but of Amerikan brood. Why should we pay to pop out and mis-educate Amerikan brats when we can get better and cheaper help?
I am Hispanic myself, I mow my own lawn, and I always pay workers almost double the minimum wage. In any case, Angelyne and Middling Joe, you must know it's illegal to discriminate against workers on the basis of race, ethnicity or origin.
If there's so much youth unemployment in the USSA, why aren't anglo kids standing around at 7am at Home Depot?
7/5/14, 8:17 PM
So much stupid in a few sentences. Jimbino is a bigoted latino- Big surprise! Meanwhile crowds of Hispanics in Murrietta are cheering on the federal government dumping illegal aliens in their neighborhoods, and chanting in spanish that La Raza will never be defeated because they "stick together". Yes, there's nothing this country needs more than millions more anti-American racist bigots like jimbino and his La Raza brethren... Secondly, please note jimbino's original post where he brags about how he can get illegals to do his work for minimum wage, yet here he says he pays double the minimum wage. Covering up your tracks, liar? Thirdly, jimbeaner, the reason American kids aren't hanging around Home Depot at 7AM is because they are not illegal aliens circumventing the law and undercutting legal American workers. Finally, dumbeaner, it's illegal to discriminate against American citizens and other workers who are in this country legally and eligible to be employed. But then, if you cared about our laws you wouldn't be trolling Home Depot for illegal aliens you could get to work for minimum wage, you chiseling anti-American dirtbag.
Crack, as always thinking that handouts is the solution to black problems...
"Centuries of wealth in the hands of those it belongs to - that's the quality-of-life solution to black unwed pregnancies."
Weirdly, Russian Jews did not have those "centuries of wealth", and yet they quickly, in one generation, achieved quality of life in America. So did Chinese and Japanese immigrants.
"The opposite of poverty is justice,... "
Nah. It's not "justice" that teaches Crack how to solve differential equations and get a good paying job. The opposite of poverty is culture of striving for success, that millions of immigrants to America have - Russian Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, and which majority of American blacks don't have.
The only thing that should be free is sterilization. One surgery and you are done. Bonus: Men and women can be treated. Why should women shoulder the contraceptive burden? Isn't that what all feminists say these days?
It will not work
I think it will work, but I don't even want to have that argument, because it's irrelevant. Think politically! Democrats think politically on everything, it's always partisan war with them.
That was my point about Sandra Fluke, which seemed to fly over people's heads. She wasn't interested in getting free contraception. That wasn't her primary goal. Her primary goal, obviously, was to demonize Republicans as evil people who are waging a war on women. It was political theater, that's all it was. That's all the Obama administration has done for 5 years. It's all he knows how to do. You think he's trying to govern? Shit. The man is a perpetual campaigner, fighting a stupid war.
We're going to be running against Hillary, yes? War on women 2016. The Republican candidate should pre-empt this with a guarantee of free contraception for any woman who wants it. And then accuse Hillary of a war on babies! And let her fight that charge off.
We're talking a budget of trillions, with a T. And you want to be an ideological purist over hundreds of millions? Politics is war, gentlemen, and the feminists are kicking our ass. Althouse is showing us how to fight this fight. Follow her lead!
That is a brilliant, witty retort at 9:24, garage. Really shows those pasty middle-aged white conservatives who don't have your exquisite sense of humor and irony.
The Republican candidate could and should attack the media over this issue. "This war on women is a lie, a big lie, but there really is a war on babies. Abortion is such an awful atrocity that this network can't even show pictures of the victims."
Make the media a target in our political campaign. Make it clear in any interview that the media will not show abortion, and ask the reporter why. Put the media on the defensive. Remind people of Pravda and how the New York Times hid all the homicides in the Ukraine. Stalin killed millions of people and the world didn't know, because the New York Times printed a lie.
You promise our people free contraception to prove that Republicans are not waging a war on women. Of course it's a ludicrous charge, as is the racist charge. But make yourself immune to it! And, simultaneously, you attack the media for covering up homicides and keeping our people in the dark.
And even if the media fails to run any photographs, the argument makes clear what liars they are. Expose the liars, fight the war, win the White House.
The pro-life movement is a winning issue for Republicans. That's why Democrats are desperate to talk about birth control, and why the media is full of stories of a "war on women."
By offering free contraception to anyone who wants it, the Republicans are clearly making love, not war. And attacking the media for covering up atrocities is not only the right thing to do, it will do damage to the most prized asset of the left.
The propaganda war is important, pay attention to it.
I agree by the way, that free contraception sounds better than the actual results. All the contraception that I know has, at best, a 99% success rate. That sounds good until you think about people who have sex 100 times a year.
I think this Althouse sentence is wrong:
It's ridiculous that we've stumbled into a position where this perfectly wholesome governmental policy is bedeviling religious people.
I disagree that birth control is "perfectly wholesome." It can open the door to all sorts of bad behaviors: people using each other sexually, treating sex as sport, and feeling nothing for each other or any baby you create.
Sex can be amazing, and fun, and spiritual, and intimate, and loving. But it can also be ugly and mean and shallow and empty. See the career of Bill Clinton!
There is no "safe sex." There is safer sex. I think free contraceptions provided by the government will reduce unwanted pregnancy, and abortions, and welfare payments, and ultimately save the government a lot of money.
So it's a good policy, and a money-saving policy (in my opinion) but it's certainly not a perfect solution. Birth control creates a facade that there's no way you can make a baby, that we have taken this issue off the table. And we haven't. CWJ is largely right in his comment at 6:47.
Interesting little trick that you pulled, Professor Althouse, and one that Republicans have three months (and 27) to figure out how to defuse.
The question you want us to focus on is whether or not free birth control is a good policy. But in the Hobby Lobby and Wheaton College decisions the question is whether it is of such merit that it should trump the religious conscience of everyone living in the United States.
And the proper answer, to my mind, is to ask who, precisely is burdened by the Supreme Court decision? Are coeds forbidden to transfer from Wheaton College? If they can afford to attend a private college where tuition plus room and board comes to just a hair under $40,000 can they not finance birth control out of pocket?
And I find it strange that a person would choose to work at Hobby Lobby and at the same time rely on abortifacients as their preferred form of birth control, don't you, Professor Althouse?
Birth control is not a public good. The benefits flow to the user and third parties can be excluded. Nor are there positive externalities from birth control that might justify making it available at public expense.
However, it would be politically clever for the Republicans in the House to pass a bill making birth control pills available over the counter.
jr565: what I meant was, at least he's paying the mimimum wage. Most people who hire illegals to be their maids don't even bother to pay that much.so at least you can say that much about him. He's paying the bare minimum.
Yeah, you asked my what I was complaining about, and you're still missing the point. Lots of illegals are paid the minimum wage, or more. Irrelevant. (Not that we should believe anything jimbino says about what he pays, since he's can't keep his story straight for the space of a single thread, lol.)
Long story short - how much public assistance does this "cheap" worker and his family require to have what we would consider minimally decent living standards? Lots. As in, billions of dollars annually. (And the people who profit from "cheap" labor put lots of efforts and resources into making sure the public assistance spigot stays open.) Iow, Mr. Libertarian doesn't want to pay the true cost of the services he desires. He wants, and gets, a subsidy.
Ann Althouse,
"The benefit is: Women having their children at a time in their life when they have the emotional and financial resources to take good care of the children who will be the future population.
It's far cheaper to facilitate family planning than to endlessly try to compensate for the quality of children's upbringing."
Granted, Sherri Shepherd is nuts but, since her money's longer than most:
Sherri Shepherd does not want custody of unborn surrogate child: report
For those keeping score, that's one life, unwanted by two separate women who thought they knew what they wanted and were free to do so.
What wasn't involved is maturity or need - which, you know, is what a baby requires - because that's what a "parent" is.
I'm out of this. Women will do what they want, with my blessing, but it still doesn't appear (appear) they've thought this whole thing through,...
Personally, I recommend that the federal government directly pay for all birth control.
The government has no money.
You're saying, "Personally, I recommend that the taxpayers pay for all birth control"
To which I respond: Pay for your own birth control.
So much stupid in a few sentences. Jimbino is a bigoted latino- Big surprise!...
The evidence seems to point that way, though he does (as you noticed) change or re-embroider his story a lot. I think he was Irish last week. And while one could very well be an Irish Hispanic, the record suggests he just makes stuffs up as he goes along. Oh, he's also an international man of mystery genius scientist.
The "Latino" bit is more than likely true, though, since the salient feature of his online persona is an overwhelming resentment toward los gringos. (This is concentrated in his curious obsession with U.S. National Parks, those intolerable exemplars of Stuff Anglos Like. Dude's been bitching about them like a crazy man for years on various blogs I've frequented, even when totally OT. But he wants you to pay for his lawn care.)
...the reason American kids aren't hanging around Home Depot at 7AM is because they are not illegal aliens circumventing the law and undercutting legal American workers.
Funny how you see those "lazy American kids" (like mine) still doing all those jobs - restaurants, hotel maids, seasonal agricultural work, etc. - in areas where employers don't (yet) have access to illegal labor, or missed out on the visa quota for imported seasonal workers.
Of course this is a war on babies, on people, on humanity. The libertine alpha issues are money, sex, control, and convenience. They intend to fully deprive Americans of welfare, life, and liberty. Their perspective of life is to live in the moment. They don't respect individual dignity. They don't recognize intrinsic value. Their principles, natural and moral, are selective or negotiable.
Many Americans are either unwilling or incapable of acknowledging that pro-choice (i.e. selective) policies create moral hazards.
Many Americans believe that natural principles are negotiable when it threatens to harsh their mellow.
Many Americans expect moral behavior (e.g. mutual respect) to be emergent and refrain from promoting it, and many actually prevent its normalization.
Many Americans take comfort in the myth of spontaneous conception or that abortion is emancipation.
Liberty is only suitable and possible for women and men capable of self-moderating, responsible behavior. The progressive demand for libertinism is the cause for moral depravity and social corruption. For this reason, Americans will be displaced and replaced as competing interests in their land.
Let's enjoy the moment until the moment has past. History repeats itself, and most people will never learn its lessons. The causes of progressive corruption and eventually dysfunctional convergence are self-evident.
This is also a war between competing interests. There is both an individual interest in abortion, and a ruling minority interest to reduce the problem set (i.e. population control). The women and men who accept "planning" are working against their own interests. The process of normalization has been exploited to promote dysfunctional behaviors.
If the primary concern is money, then why stop with funding abortion?
The war on drugs is costly both in America and outside. We would greatly curb the motivation for mass emigration in Central and South American nations by destroying the American market.
The environmental protection rules are costly obstacles to "green" development. By curbing the EPA, it would be possible to profitably produce "green" technology and energy in America. They already do the latter, but with this change, they can drop the pretenses of their marketing schemes in public, in schools, etc.
The teachers unions are protecting an extremely expensive educational bureaucracy which is producing a progressively poor product.
The medical establishment is profiting greatly from actual and monopoly-like behaviors, which have been exacerbates with the so-called health care "reform".
The social complex prevents and exacerbates the cost of rehabilitating and aiding the poor and homeless. As well as dividing people into classes and alienating them from each other.
Abortion and sexual libertinism obfuscates the consequences of a collapsing population and our liberal immigration policies create an illusion of a naturally healthy society.
Libertinism, especially sexual, is both a cause and effect of corruption.
It's ridiculous that we've stumbled into a position where this perfectly wholesome governmental policy is bedeviling religious people.
"Stumbled"? Assuming facts not in evidence, Professor. Nobody stumbled into this. It was deliberate policy.
Although I actually don't think this policy was meant to hit religious people in general; I think it was designed to hit Catholic employers.
Particularly healthcare providers. Catholic hospitals provide quite a bit of medical care, and they do so under their own ethic - a rival center which is intolerable to the sort of person who believes there can be only one ethic, that imposed by our betters. Getting rid of Catholic hospitals, or pulling their teeth by insisting that they abandon an important component of that ethic, is essential to the project of putting all medical care under the control of said betters. They're really after the Catholic refusal to cooperate in euthanasia, but going after the Catholic refusal to provide birth control is politically an easier first step in control.
In other words, once it's established that nuns must provide birth control, it's easier to go on to abortions and eventually euthanasia, since you have pre-emptively taken out the right to opt out due to questions of conscience.
So in a sense, with Hobby Lobby the administration hit the wrong target. It's far easier to demonize Catholic opposition to birth control than more general Christian opposition to abortion, both because there are fewer Catholics and because opposition to birth control is a much less mainstream position than opposition to abortion. (Just look at the anti-Hobby Lobby propaganda, almost all of which references birth control in general, rather than the specific abortifacient effect which is what HL's owners object to. Propaganda goes after the easy target.)
St. George said...
How should Pres. Obama respond? Clearly, he should use various federal, state, and local agencies to harass and intimidate the justices and court staffers. [...] Perhaps some have children who have unusual internet surfing and purchasing habits or have made interesting lifestyle decisions.
You think you're joking, but when Roberts was appointed, you may remember there was a tiny contretemps at the announcement. His son's name was mentioned, and the mother kind of rolled her eyes. This almost immediately became the subject of calls for oppo research on Jack Roberts, whom some were absolutely sure was a gay teenager. "We should reveal this publicly," they said.
Since Jack Roberts was five years old at the time, and his mother had been rolling her eyes because he'd gotten a little too excited and had to be taken out of the room for a few minutes, this idea didn't go anywhere. But I remember wondering at the time just how long it would be before someone did something truly life-destroying along these lines to the children of a conservative figure. (And then Sarah Palin came along.)
The advantage of providing abortifacients through a government program funded by general revenues, is that it removes the ability of devout Christians to opt out of it.
Long ago, the courts ruled that you can't opt out of paying your income taxes on religious grounds.
For example, many Amish and Quakers were religious pacifists, but they can't refuse to pay their income tax, even though a significant part of that tax helps fund America's wars.
So the owners of Hobby Lobby would still have to pay their taxes like everybody else, even though part of said taxes would fund abortifacients.
The constitutionality of that is not in doubt.
chickelit said...
Speaking of Hillary! elsewhere, I think she's OK with the reaching into wallets thing for birth control because It Takes A Pillage.
Ohh, chickelit wins the thread!
Jimbino: "If there's so much youth unemployment in the USSA, why aren't anglo kids standing around at 7am at Home Depot?"
As Caesar Chavez recognized from trying to negotiate wage contracts for the United Farmworkers, you can't maintain a living wage when illegal immigrants undercut you. Once we send all illegal immigrants home, wages will rise naturally to the labor shortage. And American teens will do what they did when I was a kid: deliver the papers and mow the grass, instead of sitting on the couch playing videogames.
Right Gene,
The last time I hired two teens to mow and weed-whack, they managed to run over and cut a $35 extension cord, and I was paying them more than Seattle's minimum wage.
I think I'm going to have to wait until Amerikan teens get school training in mowing and weed-whacking. Until then, Hispanics are a far better bet.
Y'all are just jealous because you can't speak two words of Spanish!
But if you can shrink welfare payments and the size of the government, why is that bad?
Shrinking welfare payments and the size of government via infanticide is repulsive.
Post a Comment