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News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
Thanks to Obamacare, it looks like the liberal dream of free birth control is about to be realized.
Earlier this week the Institute of Medicine (IOM), formed in 1970 to inform the government about health care matters, recommended that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) require all insurance providers to eliminate co-pays for birth control. HHS is expected to adopt the recommendation next month.
The recommendation is one of several in the IOM report on preventative services that should be made available to women under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.
Bob Laird, in a column at LifeNews.com, offers a great critique of the IOM recommendation that contraception falls under the mantel of preventative health services—measures intended to prevent serious illness. His central criticism—and the first thing that occurred to me when I heard this story—is that pregnancy is not a disease. Says Laird:
Contraception only prevents disease or serious illness if one considers pregnancy to be a disease.
Contraception does not fall within the category of preventative health services. These drugs, devices, and procedures prevent the bringing of children into the world. Contraception only prevents disease or serious illness if one considers pregnancy to be a disease or serious illness. Pregnancy is not an illness or disease, nor are children the side effect or the unintended by-product of disease.
Laird also points out that the abortion lobby’s own research shows that nearly half of women who become pregnant unintentionally were using birth control at the time, as are more than half of women seeking abortions. Failure rates for birth control are particularly high among the young and poor, the groups that this free birth control scheme is alleged to help the most.
In reality, if the HHS does as expected and approves the IOM recommendation, the beneficiaries will not be women, but abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, which can expect revenues for birth control to go up with the elimination of co-pays, especially when Obamacare’s mandatory insurance provisions kick in in a few years.
Laird was one of those who testified before the IOM last year, and he reports that the deck was stacked against us from the start. Many speakers had close ties to Planned Parenthood, and no representative of the Catholic Church—which runs over 500 hospitals all across the country—was invited to speak.
Insiders say the Obama administration punted this issue to the IOM, rather than having the HHS study the matter, to avoid having to make the call on birth control co-pays themselves—in other words, to give themselves cover for implementing this free contraception scheme. They can pretend they’re just following what the experts say, rather than admitting they’re offering a plum to their friends at Planned Parenthood and NARAL.
The biggest losers in this whole debacle are the babies who will be conceived and aborted, thanks to Obama’s free contraception scheme. The League has long argued that contraception is not the answer to unintended pregnancy.
Though it may reduce the chances a baby will be conceived by any given act of sexual intercourse, the aggregate effect of contraception is to increase risky sexual behavior and, ultimately, increase abortion. As reported here earlier this year, recent research found that—contrary to researchers’ expectations—as contraceptive use went up among Spanish women, abortion rates went up, too.
My contacts on Capitol Hill leave little room to hope we can stop the HHS from implementing the IOM’s recommendations. Obama wants it, as does his HHS chief, the staunchly pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius. Soon, all insurance plans in the nation will have to cover 100% of the cost of contraception. (Though current plans are “grandfathered in,” plans change so frequently that this means little.)
But a bill is in the works in the House of Representatives to amend this provision of Obamacare. It won’t be signed into law with the pro-abortion forces controlling the Senate and White House right now. We’ll have to wait on that one until at least 2013.
Meanwhile, we need to take this opportunity to highlight the negative impact of contraception and debunk the myth that contraception is the answer to abortion. And we have to work double-time to elect a president and senate who will undo such anti-child provisions of Obamacare.
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Right after President Obama took office, by executive order he started the Women and girl and LGBT Committee which placed liberal people into the second place positions in every Department of the Executive branch. That includes positions that determine health standards for women,like birth control, abortion, abortion breast cancer link and much more. The same goes with the LGBT areas also.
Posted July 21, 2011 at 12:11 am
The unreliablity of birth control in general insure a large supply of women seeking abortions. Couple that with younger and younger sexually active teens (thanks to the propoganda spread in our schools by PP) and you have an abortion industry that will flurish for years to come all at the expense of babies and pregnant women. The end result much human pain, suffering, and death. Not a good way to run a country Mr Obama. I wonder what Michelle and BO are teaching their girls?
Posted July 22, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Not all of us wish to be mothers. I am using the IUD, which has a less than 1% failure rate. I am happily married and we feel that we are enough.
No, children aren’t a disease. However, when you have absolutely no desire for one, it can feel like that. I would rather use my contraception faithfully than have to go through an abortion. Been there and done that a as a very young college student. Haven’t gone without contraception since.
I think my issue is that so many pro-life groups view children as the reason for existing. My husband and I know we will have a happy life together, just the two of us. I am very pro-free contraception.
Posted July 24, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Well, speaking for those of us who DO consider getting pregnant on par with contracting a disease, I say YAY, it’s about time that something so simple and easy as birth control pills were more readily available and affordable for low income folks. Why is this even being made into an issue? People who don’t want children won’t have so many of them and people who want children can shush up and go have their own.
Posted August 8, 2011 at 8:30 am
Freedom is not the right to do what we wont.
Freedom is the right to do what we ought.
Posted August 13, 2011 at 2:08 pm
So Jerry, are you implying that all couples “ought” to have children, must have children to do their part? Some of us just have no drive for kids. Plain and simple as that. Why should we be forced to be parents against our will?
Posted August 13, 2011 at 9:41 pm
The “ought” is that if we have sex, we ought to accept what comes naturally.
That is, we don’t kill the reproductive process, just because we don’t “want” to produce an unborn or kill the unborn child, just because we don’t “want” to have children.
Posted August 14, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Jerry, that is why there is contraception and sterilization. We love being intimate but we don’t want kids. It’s as simple as that. Engaging in lovemaking does not have to equal children. It’s a recreational act as well.
Posted August 15, 2011 at 10:22 pm
“Engaging in lovemaking does not have to equal children.”
But contraception is saying we will NOT ALLOW children, if the lovemaking tends toward conception.
Posted August 17, 2011 at 11:36 am
[...] criticizes the contraceptive mandate in general, along the same lines as my own response when the changes were first announced, Haley focuses on how the mandate’s carefully worded, [...]
Posted August 25, 2011 at 3:18 pm
[...] way to do that.” She goes on to laud the recent decision of the Obama administration to mandate contraceptive coverage without [...]
Posted August 30, 2011 at 12:27 pm
[...] way to do that.” She goes on to laud the recent decision of the Obama administration to mandate contraceptive coverage without [...]
Posted August 31, 2011 at 9:19 am
[...] way to do that." She goes on to laud the recent decision of the Obama administration to mandate contraceptive coverage without [...]
Posted October 27, 2011 at 11:17 am
[...] aside the fact that contraceptives are not preventative health care—since pregnancy is not a disease—Obama’s adjustment is nothing but a shell [...]
Posted February 10, 2012 at 12:05 pm
[...] aside the fact that contraceptives are not preventative health care—since pregnancy is not a disease—Obama’s adjustment is nothing but a shell [...]
Posted February 10, 2012 at 8:04 pm
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