Some points are related but harder to categorize. For instance the following might belong in the universal healthcare thread (there is one right?), or perhaps a new thread in Tol Eressëa, but as it impacts the election...
CommentAP sources: Obama revamping birth control policy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Retreating in the face of a political uproar, President Barack Obama on Friday will announce that religious employers will not have to cover birth control for their employees after all, The Associated Press has learned. The administration instead will demand that insurance companies will be the ones directly responsible for providing free contraception.
Obama's abrupt shift is an attempt to satisfy both sides of a deeply sensitive debate, and most urgently, to end a mounting election-year nightmare for the White House.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... 3c764ee1ac
[rant]This debate highlights what I have been saying about the Right's thinly veiled attempts to seize power in the coming election, even at the expense of any good Obama might have achieved.
Providing free birth control is a sound way reduce the incidence of abortion. People are going to continue to have sex, whether abortion is criminalized or not. Of the women I know who have had abortions, including one who was married and had children already, it was used as birth control after the fact rather than using some other method before the fact. How often is this the case for women who cannot afford contraception?
And just because contraception is free, doesn't mean everyone has to use it (some still won't, we know this), nor does it necessarily mean sex outside of marriage will increase. What it most likely will do however is reduce the pregnancy rate, and therefore the rate of abortion, especially among populations where every pregnancy is a crisis pregnancy.
Obviously I personally have no problem with religion influencing politics in positive ways. In fact one of the things I admire about Obama is his faith (others are his ability to see a way through the mire, and his intelligence). What I do have a problem with is when religious groups attack what he is trying to do, even when it is something that would help [what are supposedly] their cherished goals. Obviously it is about gaining power and prestige with some, despite what they claim their conscience is leading them to do. [/rant]