
 |
|
May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
April 22, 2013
US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer
April 19, 2013
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama's visit to Israel had no impact on public opinion or government policy
Morgan Housel: Gold collapse: The start of something big?
Pete Spotts: Livable super-Earths? Two candidates among Kepler's latest finds
April 17, 2013
Shira Rubin: Too much of a good thing? 'Palestinians' realize downside of foreign aid boom
Morgan Housel: BAD NEWS: EVERYONE IS RIGHT!
April 15, 2013
Kristen Chick: Egyptian Christians respond with harsh words to attack -- rocks, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire -- against main cathedral
Marcy Darnovsky and Karuna Jaggar: High Court to decide if you should own your DNA
Howard LaFranchi: US bracing for more Russian blowback after taking action against 18 more human rights violators
April 12, 2013
Mark Clayton: New cybersecurity bill: Privacy threat or crucial band-aid?
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jackie Robinson's Friend, Hank Greenberg; CNN's Jake Tapper; Texas County in the News is named for 19thC. Jewish soldier and Congressman
The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: FRUITY QUINOA STUFFED PEPPERS: A flavorful, colorful and edible vessel of delicately fluffy, mildly nutty filling combined with chewy apricots, tangy cherries, and crunchy pistachios
April 10, 2013
Peter Grier: North Korean missiles: Could US shoot them down?
Morgan Housel: Warning: Don't waste your capital being fooled by profit prophets
Donald Hensrud, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Take vitamin supplements with caution --- even approved, they may actually do damage
Eryn Brown: 74 DNA discoveries move cure closer for three cancers
April 8, 2013
Jonathan Tobin: What Part of No Preconditions Do American Jews Not Get?
Fred Weir: Is Putin finally trading his own party for a new power base?
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 7, 2012/ 13 Adar, 5772
Birth control agitprop
By
Jonah Goldberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In 1984, Mario Cuomo pioneered the argument that one may be "personally opposed" to abortion, while supporting abortion rights.
Ever since, this convenient locution has become a staple for countless Democratic politicians, particularly Catholic ones. It is Vice President Joe Biden's view and was Senator John Kerry's stance when he ran for president in 2004.
Cuomo's argument was a mess. For instance, in order to buttress his argument he touted the (alleged) refusal of American Catholic bishops to forcefully denounce slavery. The bishops "weren't hypocrites; they were realists," Cuomo explained. They offered a "measured attempt to balance moral truths against political realities."
As Ramesh Ponnuru writes in "The Party of Death": "It is a mark of the strength of contemporary liberalism's commitment to abortion that one of its leading lights should have been willing to support temporizing on slavery in order to defend it."
I bring this up because according to the logic of Democrats these days, all of these politicians want to ban abortion. It doesn't matter that they support abortion rights, in word and deed. It doesn't matter that they're willing to forgive tolerance for slavery to defend the distinction. They are personally opposed to abortion, usually as a matter of faith, and so they must favor banning it.
That's the upshot of the shockingly dishonest propaganda being peddled by leading Democrats and media outlets about the Republican push to "ban" contraception.
Part of the problem is simply psychological projection. Since many liberals believe there's no valid limiting principle on government's ability to do "good," they assume that conservatives believe there's no valid limiting principle to do "bad."
Rick Santorum, who unproductively helped inject birth control into the GOP primaries, nonetheless explained the flaw in this thinking. "Here's the difference between me and the Left, and they don't get this. Just because I'm talking about it doesn't mean I want a government program to fix it. That's what they do. That's not what we do."
But don't tell that to the Democrats who are desperate to accuse the Republicans of Comstockery.
"Let's admit what this debate is really and what Republicans really want to take away from American women. It is contraception," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) outrageously claimed while opposing the Blunt Amendment. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said the GOP was yearning to return to "the Dark Ages ... when women were property that you could easily control, even trade if you wanted to."
The Obama campaign insists that "if Mitt Romney and a few Republican senators get their way, employers could be making women's health care decisions for them" and require that women seek a permission slip to obtain birth control.
It's all so breathtakingly dishonest. Rather than transport us to President Franklin Pierce's America, never mind Charlemagne's Europe, the Blunt Amendment would send America hurtling back to January 2012. In that Handmaid's Tale of an America, women were free to buy birth control from their local grocery store or Walmart pharmacy, and religious employers could opt not to subsidize the purchase. What a terrifying time that must have been for America's women.
To be sure, Republicans invited some of this madness upon themselves. But it was Barack Obama who started this mess by breaking his vow to religious institutions to allow them to keep the same conscience protections that even Hillary Rodham Clinton's proposed health-care reforms in 1994 recognized as essential.
The lying demonization of Republicans isn't nearly so offensive, or at least surprising, as the extremist policy assumptions liberals are now using to defend Obama's "accommodation" of religious institutions. They argue, in short, that if employers and the government -- using taxpayer money -- do not provide birth control (and some abortifacients), for "free," then they are banning birth control. Taking them seriously -- no easy task -- Democrats are saying that there's no legitimate realm outside of government.
In other words, there's no room for anybody to be personally opposed to paying for someone else's birth control. That means the people who want birth control to be a personal matter and no one else's business are demagogically fighting for a policy in which your birth control is in fact everyone's business, starting with the government's.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
To comment on JWR contributor Jonah Goldberg's column
click here.
include "/home/jwreview/public_html/t-ssi/jwr_squaread_300x250.php"; ?>
Jonah Goldberg Archives
© 2006 TMS
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|