New Rules on Providing Women Access to Reproduction Health Care Services Will Not Change Opposition by Conservatives

Their Agenda is to Impost Their Religious Beliefs on Others – Not to Secure Religious Freedom for Themselves

One of the great manufactured controversies of the past several years has been the provision in the health care reform act that group insurance companies provide access to reproduction services and products for women at no cost to them.  This provision is violently opposed by some religious groups and some employers who say such a provision violates their religious freedom.  Of course, it does not.

In an attempt to reach common ground with the opposition the Obama administration has revised the rules to allow insurance companies to provide the required coverage in separate policies. 

The Obama administration on Friday proposed yet another compromise to address strenuous objections from religious organizations about a policy requiring health insurance plans to provide free contraceptives,

Now none of this in any way impinges on anyone’s freedom of religion.  If a person does not believe in using any of the products or services of reproduction planning, they don’t have to.  They may refrain.  Nobody is forcing them to do anything.  If a person's religion forbids the eating of pork, they are free to not eat pork.  But they are not free to deny eastern North Carolina BBQ to the rest of the population simply because their religion does not allow consumption of it.

But the objective of those objecting  is not based on religious freedom, it is to prevent other people, people who do not share their beliefs, from having access to family planning like birth control.  They simply want to impose their own religion on others, and they want to use government forces to do so.  So no, they will not be placated or quieted unless they succeed in that goal.

In this country people who act this way are mainly called ‘Conservatives’.  In a country like Afghanistan they are called the 'Taliban'.  And in a country like Iran they are called 'Islamic Fundamentalists'.  In Israel they are called 'Ultra Orthodox'. And yes, in this aspect they are all the same thing.