{"id":232,"date":"2012-02-13T11:19:41","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T15:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/?p=232"},"modified":"2019-03-24T07:17:26","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T11:17:26","slug":"the-presidents-shell-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/the-presidents-shell-game\/","title":{"rendered":"The President&#8217;s Shell Game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This past Friday, President Obama announced what he called a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/2012\/02\/10\/remarks-president-preventive-care\">compromise<\/a>&#8221; in his plans to forbid those Christians who recognize the moral problems surrounding contraception and abortion from putting those beliefs into practice.\u00a0 This new plan, he claims, is no longer a blatant assault on religious liberty for the sake of advancing his policies.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this is simply untrue.<\/p>\n<p>The president told us:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Under the rule, women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services -\u2013 no matter where they work.\u00a0 So that core principle remains.\u00a0 But if a woman\u2019s employer is a charity or a hospital that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company -\u2013 not the hospital, not the charity -\u2013 will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge, without co-pays and without hassles. <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em> The result will be that religious organizations won\u2019t have to pay for these services, and no religious institution will have to provide these services directly.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Make no mistake.\u00a0 This is simply a shell game.\u00a0 There is no requirement that pharmaceutical companies provide contraceptives to insurance companies free of charge.\u00a0 No, the insurance companies will still be paying out money for their policy holders&#8217; contraception.\u00a0 Where will the insurance company be getting this money?\u00a0 From the premiums paid by those policy holders&#8211;the very same Christian organizations who do not want to be participants in contraception and chemical abortion.\u00a0 These organizations simply no longer have any choice in the matter&#8211;just like under the plan that wasn&#8217;t falsely labelled a compromise.<\/p>\n<p>This still takes away religious liberty; the only difference is that liberty is now replaced by plausible deniability.\u00a0 &#8220;Who is paying for the abortifacients and contraception?\u00a0 We don&#8217;t know (wink wink).&#8221;\u00a0 President Obama is allowing Christians to save face by appearing to adhere to their beliefs in public&#8211;he is nevertheless taking away their freedom to actually adhere to those beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>Only time will tell whether this con job be enough to silence the opposition and allow the president to force his morality on the American people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past Friday, President Obama announced what he called a &#8220;compromise&#8221; in his plans to forbid those Christians who recognize the moral problems surrounding contraception and abortion from putting those beliefs into practice.\u00a0 This new plan, he claims, is no &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/the-presidents-shell-game\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,22,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The President&#039;s Shell Game - The 96th Thesis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/the-presidents-shell-game\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The President&#039;s Shell Game - The 96th Thesis\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This past Friday, President Obama announced what he called a &#8220;compromise&#8221; 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