The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Out on a Limb
“Al-Assad Missed Chance to Reform Syria”–headline, CNN.com, Feb. 6
‘On the Side of Women’s Rights’
A report from McClatchy-Tribune Information Services illustrates the political pitfalls of a totalitarian ideology in a democratic system:
Even as angry Catholic leaders vow to fight a new federal requirement that most employers include contraceptives in their health insurance coverage, the Obama administration believes any political damage will be limited because it’s on the side of women’s rights.
Democratic strategists think voters who oppose President Barack Obama because of the birth-control rule wouldn’t have voted for him anyway. The strategists think most Catholic women–like most other American women–believe that birth control should be affordable and available.
Of course, “Birth control should be affordable and available” is a very different proposition from “Religious institutions should be denied the liberty of declining to pay for abortifacient drugs and sterilization, which violate their teachings.”
But more to the point, if this report is accurate, the Obama people have made the error of buying into totalitarian feminism–that is, the fusing of sexual identity with feminist ideology. Not all women support the extreme feminist conception of “women’s rights.” Gallup’s annual poll last May, for example, found that a majority of women, 51%, thought abortion was “morally wrong,” the same percentage as for men, and only 37% thought abortion should be legal in “any” or “most” circumstances, whereas a large majority, 60%, though it should be legal only in “a few” cases or “none.”
And while 50% of women identified with the pro-abortion euphemism “pro-choice,” a significant minority, 44%, chose the antiabortion euphemism “pro-life.” That’s a very small difference from men’s answers, 49% “pro-choice” and 46% “pro-life.”
The Daily Caller, meanwhile, reports that White House spokesman Jay Carney is making vague noises about a compromise: “We will continue to have discussions about ways that the implementation can be done that might address some of these [constitutional and religious] concerns.” If the Obama administration does backtrack, it will be a case of politics winning out over ideology.
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