Much has been written about the Obama administration’s imposed Department of Health and Human Services mandate that, as of August 1, 2012, all forms of birth control will be provided with no co-pay as part of an overall “preventive care” program. This is an integral part, or so we are told, of the national health care law that was signed into effect earlier this year.
The administration’s decision results from an Institute of Medicine recommendation less than a month ago that argued that the use of birth control would curtail the number of unwanted pregnancies and thus reduce the abortion rate. Though the argument is false, it provided the impetus the Obama administration was seeking to further dissipate any semblance of moral sanity in the nation.
While some argue that the mandate will ultimately save insurance companies money because they will not be paying for unexpected pregnancies or health problems related to pregnancy, the classic statement in support of this foolishness comes from Planned Parenthood itself. According to the Wednesday STOPP Report,
A jubilant Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s CEO, trumpeted to supporters on Monday: “Huge, wonderful, important news: Today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it will require all new insurance plans to cover birth control without co-pays under the new health reform law.
This is one of the biggest victories for women’s health in a generation—and you helped make it happen. It took years for us to get to this point.”
Anyone who knows of Planned Parenthood’s history of strategic moves toward becoming entrenched in the Washington, D.C. establishment understands that the Obama administration has made Planned Parenthood one of its number one allies. Catering to its every whim is a hallmark of Obama’s reputation as the nation’s most avid proponent of the culture of death’s playbook.
One analyst who examined this latest government mandate wrote, “President Obama this week used his health care law to hand a lucrative special favor to two industries that have ardently supported his party: Planned Parenthood and the drug industry.”
Not only that, but as soon as this mandate takes effect, every taxpayer in America will be subsidizing the constitutionally-protected recreational drugs commonly referred to as birth control chemicals and devices. “Of course, insurance companies don’t provide anything for ‘free.’ Any time they cover a new service or eliminate co-pays, they charge higher premiums to make up the lost revenue. So the department is forcing people who do not use birth control to subsidize it, through higher premiums, for people who do.”
Early on in this debate, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement in which he said,
Pregnancy is not a disease, and fertility is not a pathological condition to be suppressed by any means technically possible. The IOM report claims it would have good reason to recommend mandatory coverage for surgical abortions as well, if such a mandate were not prevented by law. But most Americans surely see that abortion is not healthy or therapeutic for unborn children, and has physical and mental health risks for women which can be extremely serious. I can only conclude that there is an ideology at work in these recommendations that goes beyond any objective assessment of the health needs of women and children.
Indeed, His Excellency is correct. There is most definitely an ideology at work. It is based on the notion that a sexually saturated society is in need of a government-imposed prescription that negates the value of the preborn child. It is a set of principles based on the concept that freedom divorced from God is a panacea for all that ails the human being. Sadly, such propositions will ultimately render an end game with no winners—only sadness, moral devastation, and death.