Since contraception is readily available (and there already are ways for low-income women to obtain it inexpensively), the administration’s mandate is a bit mystifying.
But Susan Brown puts her finger on it in a piece on Townhall: the women’s vote will be crucial for President Obama this year, and he hasn’t been polling as well with women as he did in 2008.
In 2008, Obama won the women’s vote 56 percent to 49, garnering an even bigger share of unmarried women: 70 to 56 percent. But that was then. This month the president’s approval rating from women polls at 48 percent.
Brown writes:
These numbers shed some light as to why the administration would suddenly toss a false "female rights" contraception issue into the mix without anticipating the blowback. The real issue at hand is that the president intentionally stomped on the Constitution's Free Exercise Clause that inhibits the federal government from interference in church matters.
President Obama's wooing of the women voter this year will take the form of promising more and more government programs. I think more and more women are realizing that the money from these programs comes not out of thin air but out of our pockets.
Brown, however, sees this controversy as having ramifications beyond attracting female voters to the president’s banner:
The contraception issue is eerily similar to the Obamacare discussion (not) – which began with the faux assertion of a looming national crisis. Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress offered the electorate variant versions (orally and written) of Obamacare – to the point that everyone forgot about real issues at hand like the failing economy.
Democrats wanted to talk about healthcare, and so they talked about healthcare, and they talked, and talked and talked. Like a nagging wife who refuses to take "no" for an answer, Democrats wore us down to the point that everyone was relieved when it was finally over without fully understanding the ramifications. …
And they are doing the same thing to us again, but this time they say it is about contraception and after that, it will be about something else — because this is what happens when the federal government tosses aside the Constitution and crosses into territory the Constitution was meant to protect.
Not surprisingly, the Obama administration has come out swinging against a measure proposed by Senator Roy Blount, Republican from Missouri, that would give any employer the right to not foot the bill for insurance policies that include things the employer deems morally objectionable.
Imagine that—allowing employers to set up their company policies according to their own values and without a government diktat!
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has said that what Blount is putting forward is “dangerous and it is wrong. Decisions about medical care should be made by a woman and her doctor, not a woman and her boss.”
Medical decisions should be made by a woman and her doctor and not her boss.
What is at stake here is not a woman’s choice but her ability to force somebody else to pay for her choice.