Latest Round of Birth Control Hot Buttons Became Law Under Bush Administration

Led by the self-labeled Christian Right, Republicans are in an uproar over President Obama's decision to require employers to offer birth control in their insurance programs.  One of the key words in all of this is "offer."  Women won't be forced to use birth control if they don't want to. But if one does, you know want to avoid getting pregnant for whatever reason, their insurance programs will cover it, or at least that's the proposal by the administration.

[Hey, if I want to get a prescription from my doctor to give me endless hours of raging boners my insurance company has to cover it.  But that's okay.  I'm allowed to do this with no questions asked.  It's only when women's health is involved that we are forced to stop, take a breath and defer to what the Bible tells us.]

Doing this is nothing short of shredding the Constitution according to Republicans.  The first thing they bring up are all the religious organizations who employ thousands of people in this country being forced to handout birth control to women; women they demand turn over their reproductive rights to Biblical principles written entirely by men.  Again, the cool thing about all this is if the women who work for religious places don't want to take birth control pills they don't have to.  The whole thing is based on personal liberty as decided individually by the women themselves.  Don't know how much more libertarian that can be.  And no libertarianism has nothing to do with preventing government from telling business that they can't limit the personal liberties of their employees.  Libertarianism is the protection of the individual not corporations or groups of people.

Yet all that is way too ideological or wonkish for most Republicans to understand.  They only want to deal with the hot buttons of their made-up conspiracy behind Obama forcing women to take birth control.  They don't want to have to explain it any further than that.  They especially don't want to talk about the fact that the central mandate behind all of this was law all through Bush's two terms and never did the right wing freak out then.

There's one simple answer for that.  Bush was a Republican.  And that's all the Christian Right really cares about.  His administration enforcing laws forbidding insurance companies from paying for preventive care for women was okay because Republicans are led by God.  They don't have to prove their Christianity.  Even when they host Ramadan banquets and skip out on Christian prayer services it's perfectly fine.  Their faith is never questioned.  Only Democrats have to play by different rules and the media is more than game at enforcing the double standard.