I Think My Views May Have Changed Some (at least in some emotional way)

[TJ in Oregon]

as a result of the Obama-Catholic Church-birth control fight.

I've never been intrinsically opposed to the government. I've never cared much about "big" government vs. "small" government or "censorship" or most of the rally cries of the libertarian movement. If anything I've always been the quintisential "big-government" conservative. I've always supported the government doing something if I thought it made sense for the government to do it.

But something has happened here that bothers me a lot. The Obama administration is requiring Catholic universities and hospitals to provide birth control to employees as part of their healthcare because now the government must control all healthcare benefits or else. This is a side-effect of ObamaCare, merely an afterthought. This bill was supposed to prevent employers from sticking their employees with cut-rate insurance that won't help them if they get sick. It was supposed to be about helping people like the random kid with Type 1 Diabetes that couldn't get coverage for his pre-existing condition. But instead it ends up requiring something stupid: the Catholic Church paying for birth control. Something totally superfluous. Something that has nothing to do with illness.

This is the side-effect to the government providing a good or service; it must be done only according to the moral sensibilities of whoever is in power. There could be a conscientious objector clause, but there isn't. My initial gut reaction would always have been that the main problem is that most people think using birth control is morally okay. But this wouldn't have been an issue at all if we did't have the government mandating what should and shouldn't be in a plan in the first place. The reality is that the more of our lives that is provided in part or in whole by the government, the more issues like this will come up. And once the government deems something is a fundamental human right, like not having quantering of soldiers in a private residence or having access to "free" birth control, you're not allowed to disagree. You're simply not allowed.

I don't know how deep of a change this will be for me in general, but I will say Ron Paul is starting to sound a whole lot better than he did a month ago. I've noticed what side he's on in this fight while Mitt Romney was enacting the same rule as governor of Massachusetts. I still don't want to audit the Fed, but I must say I'm starting to warm up to that type of perspective.

[TJ in Oregon]

In hindsight and four days later, I think my only opinion that has changed is that I now oppose the individual insurance mandate, which I used to support as the only way to fix the pre-existing condition problem. I could not understand why so many were opposed to the government forcing people to buy insurance or why that was such a big deal. But now I get it. Now I see the US government is not capable of carrying this out in such a way that it will effectively just help people with expensive diseases to maintain coverage. But pregnancy is not a disease. I could understand if the administration was making a push to provide birth control for the poor. I'm growing tired about hearing that the government needs to provide more and more stuff to people who can afford to buy it themselves. (Or heaven forbid pay a rider or co-pay.) Plus the government is requiring everyone to buy insurance to cover something I am morally opposed to. The government does not seem able to keep to the supposed point of this: helping sick people get coverage.

[TJ in Oregon]

I'll also add that the government already forces us to pay for things like the Iraq war or exorbitant spending on the military which many people oppose morally. Do they get to pay less taxes?

Having a military and law enforcement is the entire point of having a government. It's exrtraordinarily difficult to enact what you have just specified because a war has a similar result on all citizens. It's not something an individual can opt of of having. I cannot live in a US that did not invade Iraq while my brother lives in a US that did. It's not something that can be individualized. Birth control is. You can decide to acquire contraceptives and I can choose not to. They are made for individual consumption.

And those things lead to many lives being lost (in the millions due to the Iraq war), yet do pro-life care about that?

Most do (Or are you asking me in particular?), but that's sort of unrelated to having free birth control, isn't it? The government mandating contraception coverage isn't going to undo the Iraq War.

Or do they only care about making sure people don't have sex unless they want to have a child. Pro life people should be in favor of contraception since it will stop later abortions from occurring.

Not at all. I'd gladly accept this stupid mandate in return for outlawing abortion but that's not on the table and will never be on the table. That's like asking if I'd rather have someone commit murder or masturbate. I'd rather they do neither. I want the murder to be illegal and I want the government to make it difficult to do. It doesn't make any sense for the government to outlaw masturbation for obvious reasons, but I still don't want it subsidized.

Now of course, you'll argue that subsidized access to contraceptives reduce the number of abortions, which my previous analogy doesn't follow very well, and while I'm not sure we have statistics to back that up (Most people would ask for them if I attempted to argue that parental notification laws reduced the number of abortions) but we'll assume that they do since that would make logical sense. That's essentially saying the government needs to pay people not to commit murder. That's backwards. We shouldn't reward people just for not murdering someone, but rather punish those who do.

But it's not about the life is it, it's about religion......

This discussion mostly is about religion. We can have another about abortion sometime if you would like, but that's a little different than birth control (unless we're getting into the fight about when life begins vs. when pregnancy begins aka fertilization vs. implantation).