Culture Wars: Republicans Are “Unprotected” on Contraception
During the 1928 presidential campaign, nutty right-wing Protestants claimed that Al Smith, the first Catholic nominated for president by a major party, was planning to extend New York’s Holland Tunnel all the way to the Vatican.
Today’s tunnel would run from the Vatican to a suburban Pentecostal megachurch.
We learned this week that U.S. Catholics support President Barack Obama’s Feb. 10 compromise on contraception in almost identical numbers to the population as a whole. Many of those sticking with the Catholic bishops in opposition are evangelical Protestants.
Historians are rubbing their eyes in wonder that the spiritual and political descendants of Protestants who founded the Know Nothing Party in the 1850s on anti-Papist ideas — who hassled not just Al Smith but also John F. Kennedy for supposed ties to Rome — are now embracing Catholics. Rick Santorum was recently greeted at Oral Roberts University by an enthusiastic crowd of 4,000.
Yes, politics makes strange bedfellows, and in this case, the Republicans, by throwing in their lot with the bishops, are using no protection. Like the controversy over the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation withdrawing support from Planned Parenthood over its provision of abortion services, this struggle leaves Republicans politically exposed.
Redefining the Debate
At first, the Komen case looked like just another example of anti-abortion activists flexing their muscles against hapless women’s health advocates. Then came a furious, highly effective counterassault fueled by liberal social media, a new counterweight to conservative talk radio in defining the terms of debate. The outcome of that flap, in which the Komen foundation reversed itself and apologized, shows that bashing Planned Parenthood may work in Republican primaries but will be poison in the general election.
The demand for “conscience” exemptions from Obamacare for Catholic hospitals, schools and charities (churches were already exempt) also looked good for the Republicans initially. Conservatives thought that they had a chance to revive the “culture wars” — the wedge-issue appeals to faith and family that have worked so well in the past. For more than a week, Republicans made Obama look like the guy who ordered Joan of Arc burned at the stake.
Their problem is that they never know when to stop. Recall the case of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state whose plight led conservative lawmakers to champion federal legislation in 2005 to keep her alive. The measure passed, but public opinion polls afterward showed the law was widely unpopular and a clear case of congressional overreach.
This time conservatives stuck with the argument that the president was abusing religious freedom even when that attack was no longer plausible. By decreeing that insurance companies, not Catholic institutions, will pay for contraceptives in employee health-care plans (as allowed under the Affordable Care Act), the president successfully shifted the subject back to birth control, where he’s on solid political footing.
Obama’s like a quarterback who calls a bad play and seems trapped in the pocket, then scrambles for big yardage.
Put Into Context
The bad play resulted from poor political planning inside the White House, which failed to line up supporters to defend its decision. But it’s a little more defensible when you know the context. For months, the pressure seemed to come from the left. The White House learned that 28 states (including Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts) already require that health plans under their jurisdiction cover contraceptives. These rules had survived court challenges on religious freedom grounds. In fact, women’s groups were threatening lawsuits if Obamacare didn’t also require such coverage, and some government lawyers argued that the new law provided no authority for any exemptions for institutions receiving federal money.
Obama’s team debated the issue and, contrary to published reports, the discussion didn’t break down cleanly along gender lines, with women on one side and Catholic men on the other. When the rule was made public on Jan. 20, White House press secretary Jay Carney faced not a single question about it. Then the regional and religious press embraced the story, and within a week even liberal Catholic columnists like E.J. Dionne and Mark Shields were up in arms.
But the firestorm may prove to be a political blessing. If the president had started on Jan. 20 with the compromise he eventually arrived at on Feb. 10, it would have been a one-day story for health-care policy wonks. Birth control would never have surfaced as a political issue.
Instead contraception is now the elephant in the bedroom — the issue that no one in the Republican establishment wants to talk about because they know it’s a disaster for them.
The Republicans may end up with a nominee, Rick Santorum, who has warned of “the dangers of contraception in this country.” He said: “It’s not OK because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
This from a candidate who recently said of the president: “He thinks he knows better how to run your lives.”
Imagine what Obama would do with that in a debate.
Instead of running away from Santorum, many Republicans are running toward him — once again, failing to get the memo on when to stop. Senator Scott Brown co-sponsored a bill this week with Senator Roy Blunt that would let any employer with a “moral conviction” (a term left undefined in the legislation) deny access to any health service, including contraception, they personally oppose. This weapon is aimed at Obamacare, but it will probably boomerang on Brown, who is locked in a tight re- election campaign in Massachusetts against Elizabeth Warren.
With all the major candidates this year enjoying seemingly happy marriages, it didn’t seem as if sex would figure much in this campaign. Wrong. The independent women who will help determine the election want the government — and their bosses – – out of their private lives.
The culture wars are over, and the Republicans lost.
By: Jonathan Alter, Bloomberg News, February 19, 2012
Why I Wish Catholic Leaders Would Stop Saying Our Church Is Under Attack
On Friday the White House reached a compromise on the contraception mandate that can satisfy both reproductive health advocates and Catholic hospitals. For those like Rick Santorum, though, who have been loudly and repeatedly accusing the Obama administration of engaging in “overt hostility to faith in America,” this isn’t enough. But if this is really a war against religion, maybe it’s time to ask the people of faith who are supposedly under attack. People like me.
My expertise on this topic is personal. Mine is a family in which priests and nuns outweigh any other profession except nurses. My mom taught nursing and medicine at a Catholic college, and placed nursing students in Catholic hospitals for 40 years. Family, faith, and taking care of people—these values are at the core of what we were taught growing up. Perhaps that is why the harsh tones, the imaginary division of the world into two camps—the faithful under attack and the attackers—seems more politics than theology. Certainly it is extremely distant from the millions of lives that could be affected by these conservative outcries. This would merely be entertaining election year political shenanigans if there were not so many lives at stake. More than 11 million women use birth control; millions more will have access to it under the new law.
In fact, birth control use is nearly universal in the United States, even among Catholic women. One recent study shows that 98 percent of sexually experienced Catholic women will have used birth control at some point in their lives. Nearly 60 percent of women use birth control pills for something other than, or in addition to, contraception. For example for women at risk for ovarian cancer, taking birth control pills for five years reduces their risk of getting cancer by 50%. Should women have to explain to employers they need coverage for serious illnesses, not birth control, in order to obtain the medicine their doctor prescribes?
Yes, there is a religious freedom question at stake, not only for employers but also employees. But much of this is already settled territory. The wide use of contraception long ago opened up the complex nature of religion in the public square and already found resolution, well before these election year political attacks. The new Department of Health and Human Services rule comes years after advances in 28 states, where regulations similar to the HHS rule have prompted religious leaders and policy makers to create solutions that serve women and their families and faith-based organizations. Take, for example, DePaul University, the nation’s largest Catholic college, which has confirmed that its employee benefits include prescription birth control coverage. DePaul is not alone—the Archdiocese of New York provided contraceptive coverage for medical reasons even prior to a state law mandating it, as did Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Diocese itself now provides coverage under Wisconsin law.
I agree with the Bishops that there are cases when the religious freedom of an employer trumps that of an employee. For example, when I was a secretary at the Sacred Heart Rectory, I wouldn’t expect my health care plan to include prescription contraception because I worked for the church. Under Obama’s regulation, religious institutions, like the church I grew up in, are exempt. Synagogues and other houses of worship do not have to provide contraception. Period.
But when Notre Dame is the single largest employer in South Bend, Indiana, with Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center not far behind, how could we say, “Sorry, you should move if you want to have affordable access to these health services.” It is discordant with my Catholic and my American values that a receptionist at the local hospital making around $26,000 a year should have to shell out nearly $600 for birth control or cede control to her employer over when to start a family, when she is already paying in to her health care plan. The new agreement would take this difficult question off the table by allowing the women and men working at these religious affiliated organizations to receive the equal and affordable access through their insurers directly without engaging their employers.
It is about time we raise the policy debate in Washington to keep up with complexity of faith, health and family that most Americans already navigate in their daily lives. Most Americans are religious. Fifty-five percent told Gallup that religion is “very important” to them. But these same Americans are also focused on the health of their families and they are, in fact, using birth control. Newt, Mitt, Rick, and all the other gentlemen trying to demagogue this issue would be best served listening to the folks in the pews before launching any more pious screeds. Most of America’s faithful families aren’t under attack from a “war on religion.” I for one don’t feel under attack—except perhaps from a small group of Republican presidential candidates who keep ignoring the voices, values, and lives of women like me.
By: Tara McGuinness, The New Republic, February 13, 2012
U. S. Supreme Court Stays Montana Decision Undermining Citizens United
Late last year, the Montana Supreme Court handed down a decision that was widely viewed as openly defying the U.S. Supreme Court’s election-buying decision in Citizens United. Last night, the U.S. Supremes issued an entirely unsurprising order staying that decision. As a result, Montana will now face the same epidemic of corporate and other wealthy donor money that infected the other 49 states in the wake of the Citizens Uniteddecision.
There are, however, two possible silver linings in last night’s decision. The first is that the Supreme Court did not agree to the corporate parties’ request in this case to simply reverse the Montana decision without a full hearing or even necessarily an opinion. Yesterday’s order suspends the Montana decision “pending the timely filing and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari,” meaning that there is still a possibility that the Court could give the case a full hearing that would almost certainly raise the question of whether Citizens United should be overruled.
The second silver lining is a separate statement from Justices Ginsburg and Breyer attached to yesterday’s order:
Montana’s experience, and experience elsewhere since this Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm’n make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” A petition for certiorari will give the Court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway. Because lower courts are bound to follow this Court’s decisions until they are withdrawn or modified, however, I vote to grant the stay.
This statement suggests that there are at least two votes on the Supreme Court eager to reconsider one of the modern Supreme Court’s most erroneous opinions just two years after it was decided. Such a swift reversal would very unusual, if not entirely unprecedented. In light of the massive influx of corporate and wealthy donor money flooding our democracy and threatening to elect a generation of candidates personally beholden to wealthy benefactors, however, this kind of swift admission of error by the justices is entirely necessary.
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, February 18, 2012
The Republican “War Against Women”: Pre-Abortion Transvaginal Sonograms Make Their Way Into Law
As a bill requiring transvaginal sonograms passes in Virginia, Texas goes about implementing the version that it passed last year.
The Virginia Legislature has been busy passing legislation to limit abortion and promote pro-life agendas. I wrote Tuesday how the state House passed a bill changing the legal definition of “person” to include fetuses starting at conception. But the body also passed a measure requiring women seeking an abortion to first have a sonogram 24 hours ahead of time. The state Senate already passed an identical measure and the state governor has said that he supports the initiative—which means it will almost definitely become law.
The measure requires a medical professional to administer the sonogram and then offer the woman the chance to hear the fetal heartbeat and listen to a description of the fetus. Because abortions occur early in pregnancies, these ultrasounds aren’t the ones most people imagine with a bit of jelly smeared on a woman’s stomach. No, these require a more invasive procedure: a transvaginal sonogram. A probe—with a lubricated condom covering it—is inserted into a woman’s vagina. The probe is attached to a monitor to show images in real time. While the bill allows woman to say they don’t want to see the images, in many cases, the monitor will generally be showing the images right next to her.
Not surprisingly, the debate got fairly brutal. One Republican delegate said most women seeking abortions do so for “lifestyle convenience.” In a statement later, he said he regretted the choice of words. Ultimately the bill passed the House by a vote 62 to 36, with six Republicans voting no.
As I wrote earlier, the personhood measure raises many questions regarding implementation, since Virginia would be the first state to successfully pass such a law. But such is not the case with the sonogram bill. Oklahoma and North Carolina have passed similar laws that are currently winding their way through the court system. And Texas’ measure is already in place, both in law and in clinics across the state.
Texas began enforcing its version of the sonogram requirement last week, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a temporary ban and issued an opinion that the law is constitutional. While a lawsuit against the law makes its way through the courts, clinics are already reporting logistical difficulties. The measure requires a 24 hour waiting period between the sonogram and the abortion procedure, a requirement which was also included in the Virginia bill, which forces women to arrange for two days of medical appointments. (Both states allow women who must travel a significant distance to have the sonogram only two hours ahead.) However, in Texas, the doctor performing the abortion must also be the one to perform the sonogram. That requirement has produced many problems for clinics, as sonograms are often performed by other medical professionals. Virginia’s measure has no such requirement. Similarly, Texas law requires that women hear a description of the sonogram procedure, whether or not they want to, a caveat that isn’t in Virginia’s law.
Don’t think that makes Virginia’s law less stringent though: unlike Texas, the bill offers no exemption for victims of rape or incest, who would also have to have the transvaginal sonogram and then be asked if they want to hear descriptions of the fetus and listen to the fetal heartbeat. It will also mean victims of rape will be forced to have a probe inserted into their vagina. Only in cases of medical emergencies can the requirement be waived.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, February 16, 2012
“The Little Man On The Wedding Cake”: Mitt Romney, Plain And Unpopular
Unlike Newt Gingrich, who can claim a regional base, Rick Santorum, who has a solidly defined political persona, or Ron Paul, who has something of a cult of personality, there’s nothing unique about Mitt Romney as a candidate. He is the definition of a generic Republican—a blank slate for the public to register its frustrations. Like Thomas Dewey—who played a similar role in the 1948 election—he is “the little man on the wedding cake.” Indeed, if there is anything close to a reason for his presidential campaign, it’s his vanilla appeal to the broad public, and undecided voters in particular.
Since the beginning of the year, however, that advantage has completely evaporated—the public has gone from slight approval of the former Massachusetts governor, to outright loathing.
In less than two months, Romney has gone from a positive rating of +8.5—43.5 percent favorable to 35 percent unfavorable—to an astonishingly negative one of -17.4, or 31.2 percent favorable to 48.6 percent unfavorable. What’s more, this comes as his name recognition has increased; the more Americans get to know Mitt Romney, the less they like him. This, it should be said, wasn’t true of John Kerry when he ran for the presidency in 2004.
Of course, because this poll measures all voters—and not just independents—this includes some Republicans who will return to the fold if Romney becomes the nominee. But the favorability gains that come with leading a unified party aren’t enough to overcome a deficit of this size. What’s more, it will do nothing for Romney’s standing with independents, which has also collapsed in the last two months. You can also expect these numbers to get worse for the former Massachusetts governor as he moves to bury Rick Santorum under a landslide of attack ads ahead of the Michigan primary. Voters aren’t keen on constant negativity, which has become Romney’s default position as the primaries drag on.
None of this is to say that Romney is doomed if he becomes the nominee, but the situation doesn’t look good. At this point, most Americans don’t trust him to stand up for their interests, a plurality of Americans don’t like him, and independents would rather stick to President Obama. It’s true that this could all change with a crisis in Europe or a war in the Middle East, but if that’s what you’re banking on, you’re not in a good place.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, February 16, 2012
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