It’s not about contraception

She'd better not be Catholic.

I'm kind of late weighing in on this dispute over contraceptives. As usual, it’s because I don’t fully understand it. It seems to me that since nearly all Catholic women already use birth control at some time or another, those Catholic bishops might be most concerned with their own ineffective preaching. If you’re beating a dead horse and the horse does not arise, who looks more foolish?

But the bishops and certain Republican candidates cast the issue in a different light: Apparently, government troops would be forcing church ladies to ingest those little pink pills like popcorn, and possibly confiscating their firearms at the same time. It was nothing less than a mortal assault on religious liberty. God supports serendipitous pregnancy and so should you. Vote Santorum!

OK, I’m overstating it a little. Actually, under the “accommodation” the dangerous madman Obama now proposes, according to CNN:  “… institutions with religious ties will not be forced to offer contraception coverage to their workers, but insurers will be required to offer free coverage.”

Got that? Neither do I. Even that one sentence is a little more information than I care to ponder in this disingenuous dust-up over religious freedom. It’s a good illustration of why the administration made a big mistake in wading into the issue. There’s just no way to present it as an unambiguously good idea.

My knee-jerk reaction is this: Given the undesirability of abortion and the equal undesirability of children being born to people who don’t want them, all people should have convenient access to contraception. I’m pretty sure almost everybody already does. Not many problems in this country stem from the lack of birth-control options. Most stem from pervasive greed and stupidity, and frivolous litigation arising from same. If the federal government is going to mandate anything, it should mandate that everybody wake up and smell the freaking coffee.

This has nothing to do with religious freedom. The shepherds are already being ignored by the sheep, and as always they prefer that the blame goes elsewhere. The candidates will seize on any little thing to distract from the fact that none of them are suitable. Why Obama picked now to help them all out is puzzling.