Our current president's contraception delusion

Our current president seems to believe that he can wordsmith any problem away. All he thinks that he needs to do is create an environment for supposed comprehensive change and then give creative exemptions to any group that opposes any aspect of the change.

For example, he somehow got a comprehensive healthcare plan passed through legislative subterfuge and then sat back and waited to see how groups reacted to the details. The Catholic church looked into the implementation of health care policies for Catholic charities and hospitals, and found, to their dismay, that the current president thinks that it is okay to provide free contraceptives for women even though the Catholic church is morally and ethically opposed to the idea of restricting births through the use of contraceptives.

Of course, many Catholic families choose to ignore the Catholic mandates on this subject. They feel that they have a libertarian right to use contraceptives because their choices are personal and thus outside the realm of institution interference.

I agree with this concept. We cannot legislate everything away, nor can we force morality and ethics on every human being, especially since someone needs to come up with what is moral and ethical in a particular culture. Most times, this is impossible to do, unless one unilaterally accepts a moral code that has been in use for thousands of years, like, say, the Bible.

So, the Catholic bishops decided that they needed to make a stand against providing free contraception to women when they are using Catholic entities directly associated with the Catholic church. After the bishops' public stand of the issue, others in the church's hierarchy also took a stand and openly expressed disdain for this mandate.

Our current president started feeling some heat for accepting and implementing the mandate, so he decided that he had the intellect, but, also, most importantly, the temerity, to wordsmith the problem away.

He just said that we'll make the insurance companies provide free contraception so that the Catholic institution can say that they aren't providing the service. He frames the issue as a win-win-win situation. The Catholic church is allowed to maintain their moral stand against contraception, the people using the insurance get free contraceptives and the liberals and libertarians bask in the glory of espousing the freedom of women to make their own decisions about these matters.

On the surface, it sounds like a great plan. There are no losers, he thinks. And, he can pat himself on the back because he believes that he can wordsmith any problem away.

He might just be able to do this. At least, he has been successful using this ploy for three years. What makes him think that he can't continue to delude the American public for another five years?

To me, the problem with his view of the world does not seem to preclude breaking any and all moral and ethical codes in order to achieve a result which he unilaterally believes is the correct one. His personal ideology is the epitome of the adage that the end justifies the means. No matter what rules we break, if we get the results we want, then the journey to that end doesn't matter.

Well, I disagree with him. When we decide that morality and ethics don't matter in the cases where our personal ideological goals suffer, then we have fallen into chaos. There is no hope. But, there is change.

In this specific case, I think that there should have been a different solution. We should allow the Catholic institutions to refuse to provide contraception in any formal manner. And, if those Catholic institutions are mandated to provide healthcare, no type of contraception shall be provided in any manner. Now, if a woman who has this insurance decides that she wants to use contraceptive devices, she is certainly free to do so, but not within the milieu of Catholic sponsored healthcare mandates.

To me, that's the moral and ethical solution. We should allow the institution to maintain its moral and ethical structure by not formally condoning contraception in any manner while also realizing that individuals may make a different decision and go outside those moral boundaries if they so desire. However, if they make that decision, they should personally fund those prerogatives outside the environs of healthcare insurance.

This is just one small example of the wordsmithing prowess of our current leader. He is the ultimate intellectual who currently believes that he can implement any type of change by using his wordsmithing skills.

Let's stop allowing him to fulfill those fantasies.