Look! Over there! Contraception!

that the insurance companies will go along and offer "free" contraception to women? That's never going to happen. And making women jump through more hoops for coverage that will never really be free further entrenches the priority of conciliating patriarchal religious structures over the rights of women. It's a compromise in name only. He has not taken the air out; he has given further legitimacy to the whole idea of religious freedom as applied to removing people's rights. This is in no way a good thing.

Violet's got it, here:

Let me just re-emphasize the point I was trying to make in that penultimate paragraph. The principle that birth control pills are a normal part of women’s healthcare was established many years ago. The principle that refusal to cover such normal healthcare constitutes sexist discrimination was established many years ago. The principle that “religious liberty” does not provide an exemption from laws governing nondiscrimination in the public square was established many years ago. There have been legal challenges to these principles, but the precedents (including at the Supreme Court level) are extremely strong.

In other words, the Obama Administration had rock solid grounds to include female contraception as part of the healthcare mandate. Indeed, it would have constituted serious sexist discrimination for them not to include it.

So the question is: why cave in to the bishops at all? Because they’re making noise? Because they’re whining? So what? The public doesn’t agree with them. Their own parishioners don’t agree with them. Nobody who would ever in a million years vote for Obama agrees with them. They don’t control the purse strings for Obama’s reelection campaign. They have nothing.

On the other hand, there were all kinds of outstandingly good reasons not to cave in. First, the fact that there was absolutely no legal reason to do so. Second, because caving in would lend credence to the specious wingnut argument that “religious liberty” or “conscience” is a valid reason to violate people’s civil rights or ignore parts of the healthcare mandate. And finally, because caving in would legitimize the poisonous notion that women’s rights are negotiable, that sexist discrimination isn’t “real” discrimination, that the question of whether to treat women as human is purely an option that you check on or off depending on your philosophical persuasion.
So what did Obama do? He caved.

His fans are impressed that he caved in such a way as to preserve women’s access to birth control pills. And yes, that is definitely a good thing. But he still caved. On the principles.

Put it this way: before Obama caved, women were going to get free contraception. After Obama caved, women were going to get free contraception, plus the Administration had acknowledged that “religious liberty” is a valid reason to discriminate against women in the public square and to reject whatever aspects of the healthcare mandate you find icky.

How in god’s name is that a “win”?

The fangirls and boys seem entranced by their vision of Obama as the savior of American women. I find this powerfully unfeminist. I want women’s rights to be a matter of basic law, not something the President holds in his gift. I don’t want the President to swoop in with a rescue while simultaneously acknowledging that the godbags have a precious right to discriminate against women. I liked it better when the EEOC was just enforcing the Civil Rights Act.

The fans are also thrilled by the way in which Obama has “exposed” the bishops and other godbags. Exposed them to who? Who, exactly, is the audience? Whose vote will be affected by this? Whose mind will be changed? What new information was revealed? Is there really a swing-vote horde of young contraceptive-using women who, up until now, thought the Catholic Church and/or the GOP was their friend, and who now realize (the shock!) that these people don’t want them to have birth control and abortions and sex?

And even if there is such a horde (which I doubt), Obama could have achieved the same result simply by standing his ground. Simply by saying to the bishops, “Sorry, sexist discrimination is prohibited by law, and contraception is part of a woman’s normal healthcare.”

As for the practical politics of the thing, Obama’s cave-in doesn’t seem to have helped. The Republicans instantly seized on Obama’s admission that “religious liberty” is a valid reason to ignore aspects of the healthcare mandate, drafting an amendment that would permit employers to opt out of providing any healthcare coverage they find personally objectionable. This was entirely predictable, and Obama himself opened the door. It will be interesting to see how the Administration responds.

Meanwhile, the bishops have announced that they are unsatisfied with Obama’s workaround solution. This was also entirely predictable. The bishops will never be satisfied, not until contraception itself is unavailable and preferably outlawed. Obama’s cave-in did nothing to appease them. If anything, his capitulation to the “religious liberty” frame has possibly emboldened them. Again, where is the win?

(emphasis added)

Primarily, privacy. When the employers had no say over the coverage offered by the insurance company, your privacy was assured. But since some employer don't have to offer the same blanket coverage, no the employer will know who is using BC or not. And if your employer objects to it, well that puts your job at risk. Or if your employer feels that your non-use of BC puts you at a higher risk for pregnancy, and all the attendant costs to an employer that causes, puts your job at risk.

Second, the optics. The president has yielded ground, ground he didn't have to yield. I got into a screaming match with my boss over the initial decision, defending Obama, something I am always loathe to do, and finally got my boss to concede that this decision doesn't mean that Obama can interfere with what a chirch teaches(which is how this was being spun to the FoxNewsers), and after all my work on that, the next day he fucking caves, disproving my point that he was right in the first place. Because he was. 98% of sexually active Catholic women use contraception, the bishops have no moral authority on this issue, a large majority of the population supports the use of contraception, and he fucking caved! Why? In an attempt to look "bipartisan" and "reasonable" to the most partisan and unreasonable of shitheads? Because he is really uncomfortable with women's sexuality(This is my vote, see repeated references to protecting daughters' purity with violence)?

His motives being impossible to determine, his actions are all we can judge. And his actions here were shitty. He bargained away women's right to bodily autonomy, AGAIN, for an ephemeral gain.

I agree that the insurance industry has a history of charging women more for various services. but when it comes to birth control, for the past decade most of the industry has included coverage for birth control. as I noted above, the insurance industry is not the ones who are protesting this compromise, even though the compromise was for insurance companies to pay for the coverage rather than religious employers. in any other context, they would have screamed bloody murder, but not this time because this is what they want to do so they can increase their bottom line. the only thing that was stopping them was that there was a small market for policies without coverage.

and what is this extra hoop you're referring to? the compromise doesn't mention anything extra that women have to do. I think you're just assuming that women will have to fill out some paperwork to opt-in to coverage. but it's more likely that religious employers will have to do the paperwork to opt-out, as the default rule is still that employers pay for contraception coverage.

as for "not consulting with the people who will affected by it", what exactly did you want? a referendum of women who get health insurance through a catholic employer to be held before the president announces his compromise publicly? you realize that has never been done for any policy in American politics before. (seniors were "not consulted" about social security when it was first proposed). it seems like you're the one who wants to throw up extra hoops, and not very realistic ones at that.

When justifying such incursions. Whereas there's never any mention of the morality of killing so many people, including bystanders and people who show up to care for the wounded.