This week, a
post by Jodi Jacobson, editor-in-chief at RH Reality Check, caused a bit of a stir:
Women's groups working to save coverage of women's health care under health reform are concerned that President Obama will cave as early as this weekend to demands by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (all 271 men) to eliminate coverage of birth control without a co-pay. The reason? The President thinks he "owes" the Bishops for help with passage of health reform.
As Hunter and I have written, the Catholic bishops have launched a new war to keep coverage for birth control out of the Affordable Care Act because they believe that women's access to reproductive health care somehow oppresses their religious liberty. It's absurd, of course, and the majority of Americans agree that contraception should be covered by health insurance.
Earlier this year, the Institute of Medicine recommended, in a report commissioned by the Health and Human Services Department, that "Health insurers should pay for a range of services for women at no cost, including birth control, counseling on sexually transmitted diseases, and AIDS screening." HHS announced that it would adopt this recommendation, but, as Jacobson and others have been reporting, it seems President Obama may be having second thoughts, thanks to pressure from the Catholic bishops and other anti-woman organizations like Democrats for Life, who issued this statement:
The Administration has no intention of forcing Catholic institutions to provide insurance coverage for services that are directly in opposition to their moral beliefs. It does not make any sense from a public policy perspective and it certainly is not smart politically to alienate Catholic voters.
Others have been quick to pick up on this false meme, that the president would alienate Catholic supporters if he did not protect their "religious liberty" to prevent women from accessing birth control. At the Washington Post, for example, E.J. Dionne wrote:
[T]he Obama team seems destined either to leave supporters in the reproductive-rights community irate or to put the president’s Catholic sympathizers in a much weakened position.
But Catholic bishops don't speak for all Americans; they don't even speak for all Catholics—including the 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women who have used contraception because, regardless of what the Church says, they don't actually want to spend their lives as baby-making machines for Christ.
And yet, as the White House decides whether to go forward with adopting the recommendation for fully covered birth control, even liberals like Dionne are helping to perpetuate the idea that Obama could endanger himself with his Catholic supporters by siding with the bishops. Not to mention the other 99 percent:
There is another 99 percent group in our country, distinct from but inextricably entwined with the now more familiar #99Percent, those everyday Americans, who--in such a brilliant framing by the Occupy Wall Street movement--are to varying degrees affected by the vast economic inequality that characterizes American society. I refer to the 99 percent of American women who have ever had sexual intercourse and have used a birth control method at least some of the time.
This should be a simple calculation. Widespread use of birth control + huge support for coverage of birth control = more important than fake concerns of "religious liberty" from the Catholic bishops. That's how it should add up.
Let's hope the president gets his math right.
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This week's good, bad and ugly below the fold.