The Obamacare contraception mandate was a major issue in the 2012 presidential campaign and liberals may soon be pushing for taxpayer-funded abortafacient drugs for young girls as part of the 2016 campaign strategy.
The issue appeared earlier this week in the New York Times’ “Room for Debate” blog. At issue is a growing debate arising out of Colorado.
“The most recent issue involves a pilot test in Colorado, where a private, charitable organization had paid for long-term birth control: implants and IUD’s and other things for teenage girls. They found that dramatically reduced the incidents of pregnancy,” said Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner, who contributed to the “Room for Debate” dialogue.
She says activists in Colorado then decided to take the idea statewide on the taxpayers’ tab.
“The Colorado legislature then considered legislation for taxpayer funding for long-term birth control,” said Turner. “It was not able to get through the Colorado legislature…because of the issue of government funded, taxpayer-funded contraception, particularly contraceptive devices that cause an early abortion, as an IUD does.”
Despite the defeat in Colorado, where the legislative chambers are controlled by different parties, Turner says we can expect this to soon become a national debate.
“When you see something like this as a pilot test and it reaches the New York Times that it is absolutely very likely to be advanced as a national agenda,” said Turner. “Hillary Clinton, if she gets the nomination, is certainly going to push women’s issues to the front and center, and this is certainly one of them.”
She added, “If we think that government really is supposed to take care of us, then that would be part of the agenda of those who would be advancing this particular type of initiative.”
She says the template was already set with the implementation of Obamacare.
“The abortion lobby has been very active in pushing for passage of the Affordable Care Act, then including in it a mandate that all private health plans free contraceptive coverage and that includes abortafacients. The preventive care mandate in Obamacare includes sterilization,” said Turner.
Turner believes this is all part of a larger, destructive agenda.
“What kind of message does that send to teenage girls, that we don’t trust them to be responsible with their own sexuality? The government is going to take care of them. They can have sex without consequence,” said Turner.
She says that message from the left is a bald-faced lie.
“There’s no sex without consequence, even if pregnancy is not one of the consequences. The incidents of sexually transmitted diseases will increase. The sense of responsibility for these young women, their ability to have longer-term relationships later in life (will be threatened),” said Turner.
“If young women are not taking care of themselves, men are not going to respect them,” said Turner. “It certainly could be compromising their health. Their sense of being able to earn their place in a civil society absolutely will be compromised.”
While Turner admits Republicans have been “all over the map” on the contraception issue in recent years in response to the contraception mandate, she says there are still stark differences between the two parties.
“There’s this culture of death that I think is such an antithesis to what health care is about. They treat pregnancy as a disease instead of leaving it as the life-giving force that it is. There is a very basic, fundamental difference between the agenda of the right and the agenda of the left. That’s really manifest in this most recent controversy,” she said.
