The Catholic League’s head, Bill Donohue, made headlines with his statement that Catholics were prepared to fight the Obama administration’s new free-contraception mandate “maybe even in the streets.”
Yet another remark in the same story now featured on Drudge also deserves scrutiny. NARAL’s president Andrea Miller scorned Catholic leaders for not dutifully accepting the decree that would force Catholic institutions to violate core Catholic principles:
The Catholic hierarchy seems to be playing a cynical game of chicken and they don’t seem to care that the health and well being of millions of American woman are what’s at stake here.
Yes, how can millions of feeble-brained American women possibly survive in a world in which a pack of birth-control pills requires a co-pay? Our very well being will suffer unless big Daddy government makes it illegal for any employer to offer health insurance coverage that doesn’t include free contraception.
This is modern feminism’s great triumph: Being able to paint American women as so dependent on government, so completely incapable of caring for ourselves, that we cannot tolerate even a few rogue employers failing to provide the most comprehensive health insurance possible. So what if such mandates undermine core liberties, like the freedom of religion and association, enshrined in our Constitution? Better to sacrifice such trivia than to expect that any American woman would have to take responsibility for some small portion of her own health decisions and expenses.
Catholics of all political stripes are outraged by the administration’s casual willingness to chip away at their ability to practice their religion. American women should similarly unite against the tired use of the specter of pathetic, helpless women to justify growing government’s power.