Birth control: The right’s still winning

From Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/02/23/birth_control_the_rights_still_winning/

Put aside opinion polls and the Komen and Virginia wins. The right's strategy is long-term and based in the courts

By Sarah Posner

Thursday, Feb 23, 2012

There’s been a troubling trend among some liberals to do a premature victory dance over the contraception insurance benefit debate. Look at the polling data, the reasoning goes, and you’ll find even Catholics support both Obama’s policy and his reelection. Who doesn’t use birth control, except for few outlier zealots? This is a political winner for Obama and the Democrats, the victory dancers contend. Game, set, match.

It’s far too shortsighted, and worse, dangerously complacent, to measure victory election cycle by election cycle. (Even gaming the outcome of this year’s election is a risky proposition at best.) The opponents of birth control insurance coverage don’t use an election as a metric. Sure, they’d love to win, but even a loss inspires them to redouble their efforts, not to pack up and go home after learning they are on the minority side of public opinion.

They are evangelists. If public opinion isn’t on their side, they’ll strive to change public opinion. They are dogged, well-financed and unrelenting. Their claims about the proper role of religion in governing and policymaking — which Democrats fail to contest forcefully enough — are eroding the separation of church and state, and taking down gains made in access to reproductive healthcare along with it.

Democrats have attempted to defuse the Republican framing of the issue as one of “religious freedom” by arguing that the real issue is women’s health. In making that argument, they regrettably glide over a crucial step in the logic. Yes, it’s undeniable that what is at stake here is reproductive healthcare. But in claiming that their religious beliefs entitle them to an exemption from a regulation requiring insurance coverage for birth control, clerics and their Republican allies are attempting to relitigate and overrule established Supreme Court jurisprudence in the court of public opinion — without pushback from Democrats.

Continue reading at: http://www.salon.com/2012/02/23/birth_control_the_rights_still_winning/