The Obama Administration and conservative activists were engaged on three high-profile issues in the last few days:
- The withdrawal – then reinstatement – of funding for Planned Parenthood by the Komen Race for the Cure. Komen, which has red-state, anti-choice management, dumped Parenthood, which provides breast screening and other reproductive health care for poor women because it also provides abortion services. But Komen has a strong constituency among affluent, urban and suburban women who were appalled at this stance and who forced Komen to back down.
- A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared California's popularly voted ban on gay marriage un-Constitutional.
- A hue and cry arose over the Administration's requirement that Catholic hospitals, universities and other facilities the Church supports must offer reproductive health care coverage (such as for contraception) that Obama's health care reform package requires.
All of these issues place the Church at odds with modern social developments – although it only fully engaged on the health insurance requirement. The legality of – the obligation to support – same-sex marriage will undoubtedly go to the Supreme Court. Whatever the Court decides, same-sex marriage is here – a majority of Americans support it as a fundamental right, and this majority will rapidly increase. If the Court decided now to reject the equity of gay marriage, including in states where it has already been legalized, the decision will go down as a black mark against the Court similar to the Dred Scott case in which it voted on the wrong side of slavery.
The issue on which the Church fared the best was the outcry over the government's forcing Catholic-based institutions to support reproductive health care rights – which the church opposes up and down (contraception, morning-after pill, abortion). Much was made that even some liberals opposed this step. This widespread recoiling even among Obama supporters – who saw it as an unnecessary provocation against the Church – may be the reason that Catholic leadership arose in unison to decry the Administration's move. And it may spearhead what not a few Catholics have declared will be a war by the Church against President Obama.
But while Komen backed down from eschewing Planned Parenthood, and same-sex marriage is here to stay, opposition to providing reproductive health care will ultimately cause the Church's demise as a major political power, which it has become in the United States more than in any other Western nation.
Think on this: in what other economically-advantaged country in the world would the Church have such a high-profile position on a health care issue, including reproductive ones? Hardly any – if any – including such Catholic nations as Spain, Italy, France, et al. The United States stands alone in this regard.
This is, of course, part and parcel of America's inability to forge a modern health care system – those tentative steps represented by the Obama Administration's health care reform bill are under constant attack and would be reversed by any Republican presidential candidate among those now running if he were elected.
But as inevitable as same-sex marriage is, America will fail as a nation if it can't implement a stable, effective, universal, cost-effective health care system – like those in every other Western country. Should that happen, the Catholic Church will preside over that demise.
