Give Barack Obama credit: The man has chutzpah. How else do you describe a president who uses his executive authority to unilaterally manufacture a government mandate for contraception coverage — a mandate with no conscience protection for the vast majority of religious institutions to which it applies — and then, when confronted with bipartisan backlash, proposes a "religious accommodation" that amounts to little more than a cheap accounting trick?
Like the Great Stupak Sellout of 2010 — the president's toothless executive order that purported to close abortion-funding loopholes in Obamacare but actually did no such thing — Obama's much-touted compromise on the contraceptive mandate is a joke. Announced Friday in a hasty and cynical attempt to bury the story in the weekend news cycle, this tweak of the administration's original rule still forces Catholic institutions to provide insurance that covers medications and services the Catholic Church considers immoral — including sterilization procedures and the "morning-after pill," a drug that can destroy embryos by preventing their implantation in the uterine lining. The only difference between the rule's current incarnation and its former one: Obama says that insurance companies, not religious employers, will be the ones to foot the bill for the objectionable coverage.
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