From the Florida Independent:
At a luncheon hosted by NARAL Pro-Choice America yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius criticized the recent pushback from anti-abortion advocates against a recent decision requiring insurance plans to cover birth control without co-pays.
Sebelius has been a key player in the recent decision by the Obama administration to make it easier for women to afford birth control. The new requirement would be implemented through the Affordable Care Act. Sebelius asked that birth control be included in a list of preventative care services to be covered by insurance companies — thereby requiring that birth control be covered without co-payments. For many women, steep co-pays have deterred them from purchasing family planning services. source
Later in the same article it says (emphasis mine):
According to the Associated Press:
Sebelius said the national health law increases access to birth control, which she calls the single biggest step to reducing the number of abortions.
“Forty percent of unplanned pregnancies end in those women seeking abortions,” Sebelius said, then grew sarcastic: “Wouldn’t you think that people who want to reduce the number of abortions would champion the cause of widely available, widely affordable contraceptive services? Not so much.” sourceWell, which is it Ms. Sebelius? Is it so expensive that women can't afford it or is "widely available and widely affordable?" And explain to me how a woman who can't afford birth control can afford an abortion. The fact is, Ms. Sebelius - most women who have unplanned pregnancies are already on birth control.
Cardinal DiNardo, who is the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, has taken issue with a decision by Health and Human Services to include birth control in a list of preventive care services.
Excerpt from letter Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo
The same forces, aided by advertising and entertainment media, promote a selfish and demeaning view of human sexuality, by extolling the alleged good of sexual activity without love or commitment. This view of sex as “free” of commitment or consequences has no place for openness to new life. Hence contraceptives are promoted even to young teens as though they were essential to women’s well-being, and abortion defended as the “necessary” back-up plan when contraceptives fail. And fail they do. Studies report that most women seeking abortions were using contraception in the month they became pregnant. Again and again, studies show that increasing access to contraception fails to reduce rates of unplanned pregnancies and abortions.
Both these trends—a distorted view of sexuality and a disdain for the role of religion—are exhibited by the Department of Health and Human Services’ recent decision on the “preventive services” to be mandated in virtually all private health plans under the new health care law. The Department ruled that such mandated services will include surgical sterilization and all FDA-approved contraceptive drugs and devices—including the abortifacient drug “Ella,” a close analogue to the abortion pill RU-486.
The decision is wrong on many levels. Preventive services are aimed at preventing diseases (e.g., by vaccinations) or detecting them early to aid prompt treatment (e.g., screening for diabetes or cancer). But pregnancy is not a disease. It is the normal, healthy state by which each of us came into the world. Far from preventing disease, contraceptives can have serious health consequences of their own, for example, increasing the risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease, such as AIDS, increasing the risk of breast cancer from excess estrogen, and of blood clots that can lead to stroke from synthetic progestin. Mandating such coverage shows neither respect for women’s health or freedom, nor respect for the consciences of those who do not want to take part in such problematic initiatives.
The “religious employer” exemption offered by the Department is so extremely narrow that it protects almost no one. Catholic institutions providing health care and other services to the needy could be forced to fire their non-Catholic employees and cease serving the poor and vulnerable of other faiths—or stop providing health coverage at all. It has been said that Jesus himself, or the Good Samaritan of his famous parable, would not qualify as “religious enough” for the exemption, since they insisted on helping people who did not share their view of God. read entire letter
Obama: "Darn Tooting"... "free" birth control for everyone.
35 page letter (pdf) from the Bishops to HHS claiming that the decision violates the First Amendment’s religion clause, and they requested that the mandate be rescinded “in its entirety.”
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