What? Pubic opinion was on their side, dammit. What’s wrong with them? Bunch of wet lettuces.

How I wish the UK government would capitulate a tenth as readily in the face of massive, angry popular and professional disapproval of their NHS plans…

Hah! PUBLIC opinion. I have never made a more apt typo.

they may well have planted the seeds to lose the war.

Heh.

According to reports on the Great Orange Satan, women will still get contraception paid for, just by the insurance company (who saves administrative costs by not carving contraception out) rather than the stoopid religious people.

linky

Also, it seems clear that this is a typical Obama rope-a-dope, where it looks enough like a compromise that when the old men in dresses* reject it, they’ll look like the douches they are.

*Not that there’s anything wrong with old guys wearing dresses if they so choose. Just as long as they aren’t trying to protect child rapists or impose absurd and inhumane doctrines upon others in the name of tradition.

The admininstration are idiots.

This is news? And hey, the fundies lost the war a good forty years ago. They’re dead and they don’t know it yet. A few of them may have noticed with the outcome of the Komen battle. They’ll win a battle here and there, much to our cost, but the outcome’s certain. We’re all sluts now.

The admininstration are idiots. If they had waited until Monday, something new and shiny would have come up, and this wouldn’t matter.

I’m at least willing to wait until they’ve said what they’re going to do before claiming this, true though it may be.

The compromise sounds better than what I feared. As you noted, it keeps contraception as a separate, and therefore stigmatized category. More seriously, it also gives religious institutions the ability to determine who is using the “outside clause” and retaliate against them.

It sounds like this compromise is not a total capitulation like usual, but I would have preferred the administration had told the bishops to go fuck themselves.

So women still get their free contraception, the churches are put in a position where they look like whiny jerks if they pursue it any further, all while conservatives out themselves as the anti-contraception, anti-woman idiots they are?

Well played, Mr. President.  Well played.

A lot of initial reaction to the word “compromise” was like Homer’s reaction to Bart missing + seeing his lucky red hat on a box. Obviously, the boy had turned into a box. A BOX, DAMN YOU.

If i read this correctly, I believe it actually makes birth control MORE available than yesterday’s plan, as now even (for instance) Catholic women working directly for the Church will get free access to BC through their insurer, by law (i.e. this basically eliminates the ‘we’re exempt from the law because we only hire Catholics’ rule). No?

If this is true, it’s less a compromise than a home run.

Meanwhile, on an orthogonal axis, I actually like the idea of starting to pry employers and insurance apart. It’s a tiny step, but I like the idea.

The major issue is the continued separation and stigmatizing of issues directly relevant to women’s health and reproductive freedom, which I agree is an enormous issue in itself and very frustrating. But on this particular ‘compromise’ that feels like the (sizable) gray lining on an otherwise silver cloud.

It looks like the President is going to win this argument by offering a compromise that both sides can live with, AND it makes the opposing side look like whiners.

I’m actually thinking the admin’s chosen word, ‘accommodation,’ is more apt than ‘compromise’ and was intended to signal that.

They ‘accommodated’ the child rape defenders’ (CRD) need to feel exempt from contributing to women’s health care by going around them and giving care directly around the CRDs and giving care directly to women.

I like this.

I think this might also be wiser in that the Catholic Church probably would have mounted a legal challenge, and I do not at all trust Kennedy to be the swing vote on this one.  You only have those rights you can defend.

Not a music comment, but just saw this at TBogg’s and had to share.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew8KPNeEds8

I think Obama and Sebelius had this in their back pocket all along. The insurance companies don’t want to have to crunch the numbers on a separate risk profile for group policies that don’t include contraception under the preventative care guidelines; pregnancy costs them more anyway; they apparently do it as part of the federal plan.

Part of me wishes that they’d squeezed on the principle of conforming group policies, but this approach makes the Red Beanie Mob look like petty bastards, along with every wingnut who threw themselves behind the bishops and not the majority of Catholics—after all, they make Big Health Insurance look good, and how often does that happen?

I’m curious—do the insurance companies only have to reach out to women, or to all employees?  What if a male employee’s wife gets her insurance coverage through his job?