Opinion

Joe Biden, Obama’s intentions, and the real right to privacy

Last weekend, Vice President Joe Biden appeared in a televised interview on “Face the Nation.” Something he said both startled me and got me thinking. What, exactly, has President Obama’s intention been all along concerning contraception and abortion in the national health care plan? I don’t have answers, but I do have questions.

To begin with, we all remember that the first version of the contraception mandate would have required all employers to actually pay for and provide contraception – including some chemical abortion pills – to their employees. Religious beliefs didn’t matter. Personal standards never entered the equation. Birth control was exalted as the supreme standard of our nation, above both religious and personal convictions.

Vice President Joe Biden. Photo Credit: Richiec on Flickr.

Did you wonder, with me, why President Obama would even try to impose such an unconstitutional standard? Most people who have attempted to study the First Amendment at any length could see how this original standard was a violation of the freedom of religion.

But then, instead of putting up a fight, President Obama seemed to relent, allowing the burden to fall away from employers and onto insurance companies. This standard is hardly better. The employers will still be paying for the same insurance that provides birth control – and some forms of chemical abortion – to their employees. Not to mention the fact that some owners of insurance companies will have their own religious objections that have not been taken into consideration by the Obama administration. Once again, birth control is the supreme standard. But the difference now is that many believe that the president is compromising; he’s giving in a little; he’s trying to be reasonable.

But that’s just the problem. Or, it’s just my question. Has this been Obama’s goal all along – to set such an extreme, unconstitutional standard to begin with that he is now able to set a still unconstitutional standard while the public believes he’s being reasonable? (Honestly, I have my doubts that many actually believe he’s being reasonable, but that’s another story.)

Put another way: if your goal is to get people to accept a certain standard that’s outside the mainstream, if you suggest a standard that’s about as far out there as Pluto (one that you don’t even fully believe in or think you’ll win on), and then, when objections are raised, you compromise and say that you only really want to go to Jupiter, voilà: people think you’re a reasonable compromiser; you listen to them; you must actually care. Read more about why Obama’s compromise isn’t really a compromise at all.

So, you may be wondering, what it was in Biden’s interview that started me thinking about the president’s true intentions in this whole debacle? Well, watch the video for yourself (only the first two minutes are relevant). At 0:46-51, Biden says, “The president ended up exactly where he intended, where he began.” At 1:12-14, he says, “That’s also where the president was at the front end,” speaking of making sure that religious employers had the right of conscience to not pay for contraception for their employees.

So, after you watch the video and hear Biden argue that Obama intended to be at the place of compromise at the beginning of this whole debate, tell me what you think is true:

OPTION #1: Biden is just using talking points. That’s what politicians do. He’s just covering for Obama’s true intentions and desires. Obama would love to have everyone pay for abortions if he had it his way. He doesn’t care about the right to conscience.

OPTION #2: Obama is pretty smart (or crafty, depending on how you view the situation). He knew he wouldn’t win what he really wanted unless he appeared too radical to being with. This provided him with the perfect opportunity to appear reasonable by compromising.

Now, in the end, despite my questions about Barack Obama’s true intentions, we still know several things:

1) Even with his “compromise,” Obama will be forcing religious employers and religious insurance companies to pay for contraception and some abortion. He’s just made it less obvious with his “compromise.”

2) Obama is clearly a very pro-abortion, radical president, having appointed Kathleen Sebelius as his HHS secretary and having voted against an Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, to name just a couple of things.

3) Vice President Biden is wrong and very “un-vice-presidential” to say that those of us who object to the contraception mandate in either version are “out of touch with reality” and that the fact that we’ve even begun this debate is “remarkable.”

4) The solution to this conundrum is for pro-lifers to analyze very closely whom we vote for in 2012.

As a final point – and rabbit trail – to those who would like to disagree with me simply based on the fact that you like birth control and you assume I’m against it: I am actually not against all birth control. Wow, can you believe it? Though some may have just experienced the shock of a lifetime, I know for a fact that many pro-lifers wholeheartedly agree with me.

Here’s what I stick to: any contraception/birth control that acts only to prevent a pregnancy is each couple’s own decision and private business. Any contraception/birth control that ends a life once it has begun (yes, this includes preventing implantation, since life begins at fertilization) is wrong. Pretty simple if you think about it. Preventing a life is 100% not the same as ending a life. For example, getting your dog spayed is not the same as killing her puppies once they are born. Right?

Basically, I believe that the members of every couple have the responsibility to do their own research and ensure that, if they use contraception, they use only a kind that prevents pregnancy. I don’t think whether I or anyone else uses this kind of contraception or never touches it is anyone else’s business. This, my friends, is what the right to privacy really means.

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Ninek

Obama’s tactic is one used both in retail and in movies. For example, if my big store wants to attract customers, I announce a big sale. But, I raise the prices, then deduct some from that and put out tags and signs that LOOK like prices have been reduced. The public is fooled.

In movies, for example, the ratings folks are always looking for something to cut to justify their existence, so some filmmakers add extra gratitutious violence IN ORDER TO GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO CUT. The filmmaker gets away with the amount of fictional violence that he intended, and everyone THINKS a compromise has been made.

Obama wasn’t just studying how to destroy the US while he was calling himself Barry: he was also studying theater.
Oedipa Mossmoon

If one acknowledges that most health care plans covered contraception long before reform was even a twinkle in Obama’s eye, then the minimum standard of care that undergirds the ACA doesn’t make much of a change. It only changes the prescription from being a co-payment to not being a co-payment. It would have been a rare health care plan that didn’t have birth control in it’s coverage, even if the insurer only payed for a fraction of it. So all the outrage du jour over employers being denied First Amendment Rights seems a little late to the debate. They were buying plans with contraception coverage all along. It’s just that you had to fork over [insert your co-payment here] for it.
- Kristiburtonbrown
  
  Number one, I think you need to present research if you want to say that religious employers have been “buying plans with contraception coverage all along.” Maybe, maybe not. But regardless, I think you miss the point that there is a HUGE difference in people paying for their own contraception (whether included in the plan or not) and employers and/or insurance companies being FORCED by the government to pay for people’s contraception and abortion. Big, big difference. And that is what we object to. Government should not force a business owner or an insurance company to pay for a controversial issue.
  - Ninek
    
    Exactly, Kristi. If an organization CHOOSES to allow their employees a plan that includes contraception, that’s their CHOICE. Remember choice, pro-choicers? It actually means making a decision. I know, I know, you think choice=death, but that’s because you’re sheeple and you’ve allowed yourselves to be taken in by the industry that profits from your “choice.” In the olden days it meant you could decide for yourself, including what kind of policy and coverage to obtain for your employees.
  - Oedipa Mossmoon
    
    Over half of the states have already passed laws that mandate at least some contraception coverage in plans. And according to healthinsurancerates.com (if add a proper link my post gets scrubbed) over half of large group plans routinely cover birth control. That number’s larger if you look at narrower coverage.
    
    No, would a religious institution opt out of a plan with that coverage? If it’s in their dogma, sure. Would a religious owner of a private, for-profit company opt out? I’m not so sure. And I certainly don’t think you’re making that distinction in either you comment, above, or in your piece. I read it as advocating for the Blunt/Arizona House point-of-view that would allow any employer anywhere to opt out of any medical coverage he/she wishes based on any spiritual whim they might want to stand on.
    
    The contraception standards in the minimum standard of care baked into the ACA are there to address some inequities that still exist in coverage for women’s health. If you find that “controversial”, that speaks more to the ideological corner the right-wing has backed itself into than to how most women approach the topic in the 21st century.
    - Kristiburtonbrown
      
      For what it’s worth, I don’t think states should mandate contraceptive coverage either. So yeah, pro-lifers should (as some do) object to the forced coverage of contraception/abortion by any government, be it state or federal.
      
      As you state, you’re not sure who would or wouldn’t opt out of a plan with such coverage. This kind of goes to my point…it’s not for you, me, or anyone besides the company themselves to make the call if they want to cover contraceptives. There should always be an exemption for legitimate religious objections…the law has already dealt before with made-up, fake religious claims as distinguished from legitimate ones btw, so that’s not really an issue.
      
      Finally, I don’t know why you want to claim you speak for “most women” and I don’t. Clearly, there’s women on both sides of this issue, and arguing who speaks for “most” doesn’t really get us anywhere. The facts remain that more people are becoming pro-life and seeing the truth that every life–even at the earliest stages–deserves protection.
      
      P.S. I am happy to see in your other comment that you think universities should be given an exemption from contraceptive coverage. Of course, I think hospitals should be too, since it should be based on the employer who is paying for the coverage, but I’m glad you at least made a step in the right direction =) Thanks for the discussion.
      - Oedipa Mossmoon
        
        Well, you seem to be subscribing to a more employer-enabling policy line than I would. Even if a university doesn’t succeed in filling out it’s entire student body or it’s entire work force with with true believers, I can accept that it’s mission exists to write the dogma into their educational philosophy to some extent.
        
        But the Hindu doctor or Protestant janitor or Jewish accountant or atheist orderly really aren’t obliged to accept that there’s a particularly Catholic way to administer medicine when inside a Catholic hospital. Which is a roundabout way to say that baked into the First Amendment is not only freedom of religion, but freedom *from* religion and the minimum standard of care that’s in the ACA is freeing many employees from religious biases they don’t subscribe to, while expanding a very uncontroversial health provision for women.
        
        Which brings me to my last point. I wasn’t presuming that you or I or anyone speaks for “most women”. I was presuming that in 2011 and before, birth control wasn’t controversial. In 2012, it’s been resurrected as a controversy as if it’s 1965. We’ll have to disagree on whose political machinations (or political mis-steps) have brought us here. Your youth recruitment notwithstanding, if the under-30 women vote holds up as it is now (Obama over Romney by 30 points — USA Today/Gallup), it may be either the smartest machination ever devised or the dumbest mis-step ever flubbed.
      - Oedipa Mossmoon
        
        Sorry, that’s the under-50 women vote. Still 30 points.
- MoonChild02
  
  Most religious institutions are self-insured. By requiring insurance providers to pay for birth control, the government is still making religious institutions pay for it outright. Therefore, there are many insurance providers who didn’t provide coverage of contraception before, and now have to, since, in such cases, those providers were the employers, themselves.
Guest

Most people who have attempted to study the First Amendment at any length could see how this original standard was a violation of the freedom of religion.

People who have “attempted to study the First Amendment at any length” may believe that, but unfortunately for the pro-life movement, the law is interpreted by people who have studied it at greater length than reading the Wikipedia entry.

Did you know that some people go to graduate school for several years and read great big long books to learn about the law? Really. There’s more to it than Wikipedia.
- MoonChild02
  
  Yes, we know that. We also know that many of those same people who studied the First Amendment in graduate school also believe that the new health care law is unconstitutional.
  
  Furthermore, anyone living in the US who has been through high school has studied the First Amendment beyond Wikipedia. US Government is a required class for high school students. While we may not have studied it as much as lawyers have, a high school education is more thorough than a Wikipedia entry.
  - Oedipa Mossmoon
    
    The health care law is being challenged on the basis of the enumerated powers of the federal government and the commerce clause of Article I. No one has mounted a credible challenge based on the First Amendment.
    - Kristiburtonbrown
      
      Sorry, but you’re wrong there, Oedipa. A credible challenge, based on the First Amendment (as well as other laws) has indeed been mounted. Perhaps you should check it out: http://www.becketfund.org/ccu/. And it’s baseless to claim that this case isn’t “credible” simply because it hasn’t made its way through court yet, so I’m hoping you won’t try that angle. I think you know better =)
      - Oedipa Mossmoon
        
        Thanks, Ms. Brown. That case hasn’t got much ink, so I hope you excuse my unfamiliarity with it.
        
        And for what it’s worth — I actually think the government should have carved out wider exemptions for contraception. I draw the line between universities (should have exemptions) and hospitals (should not) because universities are presumably advocating the church’s teachings where the hospitals are not.
- Tris
  
  Hey Genius, this article was written BY AN ATTORNEY!
  - Guest
    
    I’m aware that Ms. Burton Brown claims to be an attorney, yes. However, one would reasonably expect that a real attorney would have moved beyond Wikipedia as her go-to source Perhaps whatever school Ms. Burton Brown attended needs to review its academic standards.
    - http://twitter.com/CalFreiburger Calvin Freiburger
      
      And if you’re such a legal expert, then perhaps you could actually point out WHERE her legal analysis is flawed. Put up or shut up.
      - Guest
        
        Oh, I’m not a legal expert, and you’ve misunderstood Ms. Burton Brown’s column. It is not a legal analysis; rather, it is the exposition of a conspiracy theory.
        
        Regarding the legal issues, however: the First Amendment is not an opt-out clause for people whose principles conflict with those of the government. Quakers can’t refuse to pay taxes because they fund wars; the Amish can’t decide that they’re not going to pay the employer’s share of Social Security/Medicare taxes for their employees. I’m not saying that these precedents will be applied to the ACA–that’s for the Supreme Court to decide. And when they do, they won’t be citing Wikipedia.
        
        Two useful resources for bloggers who are seeking to rise above the eighth-grade term-paper level of research are below:
        
        http://lp.findlaw.com/
        http://www.law.cornell.edu/
      - http://twitter.com/CalFreiburger Calvin Freiburger
        
        You’re good at chest-puffing, but I’m not seeing a whole lot of substance to back it up. There’s a rather wide gulf between paying taxes (especially taxes for purposes explicitly authorized by the Constitution, like the military) and compelling private individuals to offer a good or service. Funny how you didn’t figure that out amidst your in-depth legal readings…