A new Obama campaign ad, Dreams of Our Daughters—get it, a take off of Obama’s bio, Dreams From My Father—depicts a mother with two daughters going through a happy day. (It is amazing how men barely exist in Obamaland, but I digress.) The Mom speaks about her daugters’ dreams for their futures. So far, so good. But then, she claims to support Obama’s reelection “passionately” because of birth control!
Rick Santorum isn’t the Republican nominee, so this seems a really dumb move politically, but it’s their dime. However, Mom deceives viewers, so as a believer in truth in advertising, I felt the duty to set the record straight.
From the ad transcript:
It is upsetting to me that in 2012, the use of birth control has become controversial. Birth control isn’t just for family planning, it is preventative care and treatment. It’s medication that most women need and use at some point in their lives and it is as common in a woman’s medicine cabinet as cough medicine. Beyond that, it is a woman’s right to make her decisions about her own body and her own life.
Well, let’s deconstruct, shall we?
- No one is trying to stop women from using birth control. I know of no legislative proposals to outlaw it. Indeed, the “morning after pill” can be purchased by adult women without a prescription.
- Birth control is only “controversial” in this election because the media and the Obama Adm. made it so. Before George Stephanopoulos asked about contraception at a Republican Primary Debate, which seemed completely out of left field at the time, no one was talking about it.
- The primary controversy over the Free Birth Control Rule has nothing to do with birth control. Rather, those who believe in the First Amendment—both those who believe contraception is fine and those who object to it based on dogma—object to Obama forcing religious groups and institutions to violate their free exercise rights by being forced to make birth control available to their employees through their insurance plans.
- The Obama Free Birth Control Rule is controversial because oversteps the proper role of the federal government to force every employer in the country—except dissenting churches and nunneries—to provide free birth control, sterilizations, abortifacients, and non reproductive health services such as domestic violence screening. Such a rule wrongly harnessed the raw power of federal regulation to impose a requirement on the private sector intended to reward favored political constituency groups.
- If birth control is already “as common in a woman’s medicine cabinet as cough medicine,” then women can obtain it now without significant difficulty. Hence, no need for the federal power grab.
At the end of the ad, the mother says, “The dreams of all our daughters are at stake.” If they are allowed to be born, she could have added. You see, President Obama opposes banning sex selection abortions. Now that, it seems to me, should be the real controversy!
