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So the long-awaited HHS contraception coverage mandate goes into effect today, and GOP freshman House members held a press conference to draw attention to it. But one of them may have gotten a little carried away, per The Hill’s Elise Viebeck:
“I know in your mind you can think of the times America was attacked,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), a freshman.
“One is December 7 — that is Pearl Harbor Day. Another was September 11 — that was the day of the terrorist attack.
“I want you to remember August 1, 2012 — the attack on our religious freedom. That is a date that will live in infamy, along with those other dates.”
Starting Wednesday, most employers will have to cover contraception in their health plans without a co-pay.
Now even acknowledging that some people (presumably including Kelly) think, or at least claim to think, the use of an IUD or Plan B contraception—and for all I know, maybe The Pill—is morally equivalent to pulling out a gun and shooting an infant, this is a pretty amazing analogy. For one thing, the treatment of post-fertilization contraceptives (or as anti-choicers prefer to call it, “abortifacients”) as “murder” remains a small minority position in America. For another, helping pay for insurance coverage for a procedure and performing it are two different things—a fact that seems to have been completely lost in all the hysteria about Catholics (or at least the minority of Catholics who actually agree with official church teachings on the subject) being forced to abandon their religious beliefs. And finally, the mandate was about as stealthy as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
Other than all that, of course, it’s a perfect analogy, but so is pretty much every event under the sun.
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joyzeeboy on August 01, 2012 3:47 PM:
Dude, hit a pet peeve of mine.
"A DATE which will live in infamy" not a day of infamy.
Peter C on August 01, 2012 3:48 PM:
"So, Mr. Romney, do you agree with GOP Freshman Congressman Mike Kelly that today will "live in infamy" because starting today employers will have to pay for contraception? Do you? Huh??? ANSWER THE QUESTION! IS THIS REASONABLE OR NUTTY? IS IT AN ASSAULT ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM???"
There *really* should be a political cost for saying stupid stuff - one which bites the whole Party.
T2 on August 01, 2012 3:50 PM:
there is no reason to try and make sense of this stuff. I'm just amazed at how off-the-wall a bunch of people are. People who don't get pregnant don't have to decide whether to have an abortion or not. You'd think the Conservative Nuts would applaud that...but nooooo.
c u n d gulag on August 01, 2012 3:54 PM:
Yes, generations from now, who will be able to forget that August 1st, 2012, was the first day of the "Zygote Holocaust?"
'Oh, the INhumanities!"
It's truly a day that will live in 'non-famy.'
Jayzoos, if these people got any feckin' crazier, Nurse Ratchet will have to come and make sure that they're swallowing their medication!
Mikhail on August 01, 2012 4:03 PM:
I have to wonder if at some point all this rhetoric just stops being effective. I mean... if you tar and feather a fairly moderate center-left (or even center-right as some like David Frum and Andrew Sullivan are saying) president as a socialist/communist/murderer, and an insurance policy as equivalent to genocide and sneak attack mass murders... and you use it constantly... does it still have the kind of sting it used to? Do people still care?
Or for that matter, are people able to tell the difference between one Date of Infamy and another, between something actually serious and something that is just 'run-of-the-mill'.
I am genuinely curious as to what this kind of rhetoric means in the long run. Constant escalation?
Don on August 01, 2012 4:05 PM:
Kent Brockman: Ladies and gentlemen, I've been to Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together.
TCinLA on August 01, 2012 4:11 PM:
Always nice to have one of these morons come along and remind us all how really unintelligent you have to be to be able to flunk the IQ test low enough to be one of them.
TCinLA on August 01, 2012 4:14 PM:
Actually, it's the 69th anniversary of the low-level raid on Ploesti, in which the Army Air Forces took 40% casualties trying to knock out Hitler's oil supply.
You know, back in the days when Americans could get together to do something worthwhile and even most Republicans served?
The New York Crank on August 01, 2012 4:19 PM:
First of all, let's get something straight. Pearl Harbor Day is a DAY of infamy. A DATE of infamy was the date I had with Wanda Wistoloff, who really didn't want to go out with me, but her mother insisted. And then, in the restaurant, after eating the big bowl of Manhattan Clam Chowder, Shirley vomited on me.
Now that we've got that straight, I think it's time we had a few more national holidays. I propose National Blastula Day to memorialize all those little baby balls of cells that were destroyed even before they had a chance to speak up for themselves, and also National Gastrula Day, for those who followed their younger Blastulas to doom.
We could even have a Saint Blastula and a Saint Gastrula – the first American non-sectarian saints. (Christian nonsectarian, of course.)
Yours Very Crankily,
The New York Crank
troglodyte on August 01, 2012 4:23 PM:
High Five, my cranky friend.
Ive had a few Dates of Infamy, too, but none named Wanda.
caduceus on August 01, 2012 4:51 PM:
FYI: the latest research on Plan B does not support the previous (much earlier) theory that it prevents implantation. Newer studies conclude that Plan B and similar post-coital hormonal regimens delay ovulation instead. Plan B cannot, therefore, act as an abortifacient; there is nothing to abort. Should unprotected intercourse and Plan B use occur after ovulation pregnancy rates are not affected.
Not that this will change the congressman's mind or his rhetoric. Facts have always been irrelevant in this debate.
plane on August 01, 2012 5:10 PM:
Not Really Ed. Although I agree with your article, I don't buy your analogy that performing a procedure vs. paying for it are always two separate acts. I'm not saying abortion is murder but let's talk about murder for a moment. Is there a difference between someone who hires a killer to murder someone and the assassin? Not really. The anti-choice side may be going off the deep end from your point of view, but it helps to understand where they're coming from.
SecularAnimist on August 01, 2012 5:28 PM:
plane wrote: "I'm not saying abortion is murder but let's talk about murder for a moment."
If you are "not saying abortion is murder" then why do you even bring it up, especially since this has NOTHING TO DO WITH ABORTION?
The ACA rule covers CONTRACEPTIVES, NOT ABORTION.
You are asking whether there is a difference between a woman seeking contraceptives to PREVENT PREGNANCY, or even contraceptives prescribed by her doctor for life-saving treatment of a medical condition completely unrelated to pregnancy, and "someone who hires a killer to murder someone"?
Are you an idiot?
tb on August 01, 2012 5:31 PM:
Chic-Fil-Infamy Day: Like 911- 100x, or 91,100. Hard to understand how they also claim there is no "war on women" when this rhetoric, bad grammar and all, is all too much.
Doug on August 01, 2012 8:03 PM:
While I'm presuming the New York Crank is being facetious, perhaps people might be interested in the actual words of that speech?
"Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy..." Franklin D. Roosevelt, address to Congress, 8 December, 1941.
biggerbox on August 01, 2012 8:49 PM:
Plane, a proper analogy is to ask if the employer who pays a guy to work in his factory is a murderer, if that factory worker goes out and hires a hit man and pays with money he made at the factory?
Not that contraception is in any way analogous to murder, but let's be clear on the agency and levels of blame, ok?
The New York Crank on August 01, 2012 10:42 PM:
Doug, if Franklin Roosevelt actually said "a date that will live in infamy," then I'm not surprised. I always thought Wanda was a little bit older than she looked. The scandal is that the President of the United States, on Pearl Harbor Day, would be going out with Wanda instead of Eleanor.
I'm not getting into who's responsible for murder if Wanda was on the pill (obviously not during her date with Roosevelt; I'm talking about many years later when the pill was finally invented.)
Except, a random thought just occurred to me. If, say, Wanda and I are out on a date, and Wanda is fertile that night, and I'm feeling sexy,and so is Wanda, but we don't do anything about it, are we guilty of failing to bring a child to life? Is the potential fetus a person same as a fetus is a potential person - not to mentioin a corporation? And if so, is failure to bring the fetus into being that the same thing as passing a man who is choking and failing to administer the Heimlich maneuver? And if a corporation is a person as the Supreme Court insists, and a corporation is failing
and the Government fails to bail it out, is that murder, too?
The trouble I have with all those guys on the right is that they keep confusing the philosophy of dadaism with biology.
But it's getting late and so to bed.
Crankily yours,
The New York Crank
Wally on August 02, 2012 11:27 AM:
Reminder: the same people who think Roman Catholic dogma should trump democratically passed laws are the ones who yell and scream about "Sharia."
Rick B on August 02, 2012 12:37 PM:
@Mikhail 4:03 PM
The conservatives are panicking that their society is dying. They've tried reasonable argument and mild rebuke and the Civil Rights movements (Black, women, LGBTQ, etc.) continue to grow stronger.
The social changes are destroying their world and nothing has stopped those changes, so now they are throwing everything they can at the "problem."
In the long run they have already lost. That's what all this rhetoric means. It's pure panic. In two decades this will seem to be nonsense to anyone who bothers to remember it.