The Political Reality Behind the HHS Mandate

From American Thinker

By Janice Shaw Crouse

President Obama's policies and politics are focused like a laser on the so-called "women's rights" vote -- the feminist and the single women's vote.  According to Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQR), feminist voters in the 2008 presidential election created a "new American electorate."  The data support that conclusion.  Unmarried women supported Barack Obama by a 70-to-29 percent margin, and they voted for Democratic House candidates by a similar margin, 64-to-29 percent.  There was a 44-point difference in the voting patterns of married and unmarried women in 2008.  Unmarried women edged out both younger voters and Hispanic voters as the demographic with the strongest support for Obama.

The inescapable conclusion?  The president is dependent upon continued feminist support for his re-election.  He is more than willing to throw religious rights voters "under the bus" to appease the "new American electorate."  His policy agenda melds with theirs so he has no inner conflict over the choice; he knows he won't get the vote of the "faithful" anyway.  Those coldly political calculations set the stage for the health policy mandates that shred religious liberty.

Obama's birth control mandate requiring employers, even religious institutions, to cover birth control for their female employees is another instance where the president relies on the women's abortion rights groups to mask his attack on religious freedom.

Those same women's abortion rights activists can be counted on not just to support the president's extreme, radical policies, but to destroy any opposition to his agenda.  Those activists were behind the vile attacks against Sarah Palin in 2008; their vicious campaign to destroy her -- as they had done to Judge Robert Bork, Justice Clarence Thomas, and others -- was just the first course of today's politics-of-personal-destruction feast.  It was not merely a matter of defeating Sarah Palin; it was to ensure that a pro-life, family oriented, conservative woman could never again successfully run for public office, nor could any future politician dare to choose a running mate with conservative values.  Thus, a woman -- who chose not to abort her Down syndrome child -- with more executive experience than the other three candidates put together was caricatured to appear clueless, ignorant, and not ready for prime time. 

Obama, the candidate with the most extreme leftist voting record of any senator, the candidate with the thinnest resume for president ever, and the candidate who sold himself to Christian believers as being pro-life and to the left as being pro-abortion, was never questioned on the inconsistencies between his voting record and his campaign rhetoric. The man who let everyone fill in the blanks for his "change" and "hope" rhetoric was elected president of the United States. 

Mr. Obama is counting on obfuscating his record ­­-- extreme policy mandates, radical czars, economic failures, contributing to the worst elements of cultural corruption, and trampling on the nation's foundational principles, like religious liberty and freedom of speech so that his failures are glossed over while his political opponents are savagely destroyed.

Mandatory, free contraception's triumph over religious freedom is not the sole issue of the president's birth-control mandate.  It is about extending the power of government and ObamaCare to rule any and all aspects of our personal lives and individual choices.  When Obama promised that "conscience clauses" would protect believers and avoid the kind of moral dilemmas that characterize this administration's actions and appointments, he didn't mean it.

The birth control mandate starkly proves that we cannot trust anything the president promises.  This president shows utter disregard for religious freedom, disdain for religious people whose values and beliefs are trampled by his policies, and his total commitment to his feminist base.  Further, it shows his continued willingness to sacrifice the nation's foundational principles of government, limited by moral principles and the consent of the people, on the altar of his personal ambition and anger-driven ideology.

Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., is a spokesperson for Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee.