By Terence P. Jeffrey
In two campaign speeches over the last two days, President Barack Obama has twice mistakenly mentioned “my sons” when defending his administration’s regulation requiring virtually all health-care plans in the United States to provide women, without any fees or co-pay, with sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that can cause abortions.
Obama, of course, has two daughters–10-year-old Sasha and 13-year-old Malia–but no sons.
On Monday, 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations across the country–including the archdioceses of New York and Washington, D.C. and the University of Notre Dame and Catholic University of America—filed 12 different lawsuits against the Obama administration arguing that because the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate would force Catholics to act against the teachings of their faith it violates the First Amendment right to freedom of religion.
At the Iowa State Fair Grounds on Thursday, Obama said: “We don’t need another political fight about ending a woman’s right to choose, or getting rid of Planned Parenthood or taking away affordable birth control. We don’t need that. I want women to control their own health choices, just like I want my daughters to have the same economic opportunities as my sons. We’re not turning back the clock. We’re not going back there.”
Both the transcript of the Iowa speech distributed by the White House and a video of it posted by the Des Moines Register indicated that Obama mistakenly said “my sons.”
The video of the speech posted by the Des Moines Register also shows that despite his slip about “my sons,” the president was speaking with the help of a teleprompter.
On Wednesday at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City, Calif., Obama made the same mistaken reference to “my sons.”
“We don’t need another political fight about ending a woman’s right to choose, or getting rid of Planned Parenthood, or taking away access to affordable birth control,” Obama said, according to the White House transcript of his speech. “I want women to control their own health care choices, just like I want my daughters to have the same opportunities as my sons. We’re not rolling back the clock.”