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Obama admin birth control solution a victory for all sides

Let me finish tonight with this.

Let me finish tonight with this.

The Obama administration has found a way to offer birth control to women who want it without infringing on religious belief. It is a victory for the president and Roman Catholics.

How do we ensure that women get birth control? How do we insure that religious organizations are not forced to pay for it?

Answer: allow employees of religious institutions access to stand-alone coverage for birth control from a third party, covering the cost with small offsets to the fees insurance have to pay to take part in the new exchanges where they will put their policies on sale.

The key here is that it gets around a pair of goals that were in conflict, are not anymore. One goal is to reduce dramatically the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. There are obviously other ways to do that; regular use of birth control is one that works.

The other goal is to protect religions from having to do something they believe is morally wrong. In this case, the Catholic Church is protected from having to pay for birth control insurance.

My own belief is that the solution the Obama administration reached here is win-win. I say that as someone who believes in the Clinton case that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. By getting birth control to women for free will help to make it rare. To keep the Catholic Church out of that transaction makes it no less beneficial to the goal of averting unwanted pregnancies and with them, in many cases, the decision to have an abortion.

This is what good, smart, progressive, morally upright politics is all about.