To continue on the points that there is no access problem when it comes to birth control, and that this hard-Left administration issued the mandate because they consider themselves in a “war” with believing Christians (to quote Commissar Sebelius). In that same Ed Morrissey post that Mark referenced yesterday, “Mandate a cure in search of a disease,” Ed argues:
Why is this mandate necessary in the first place? Is there some great crisis of access to contraception and abortifacients among employed people that only employers can solve? In my column for The Week, I look at the CDC’s in-depth survey of contraception use and find out that the question of access never even comes up as a barrier:
Employers still have to provide coverage — at no cost, not even copays — for contraception and abortifacients such as “ella” and Plan B, as well as IUDs. Here’s a question few are asking: Why? Obama and his administration insist that women need better access to contraception and abortifacients, but few women have problems accessing them. The CDC reported in 2009 that contraception use wasn’t exactly lacking: “Contraceptive use in the United States is virtually universal among women of reproductive age: 99 percent of all women who had ever had intercourse had used at least one contraceptive method in their lifetime.” Of all the reasons for non-use of contraception in cases of unwanted pregnancy, lack of access doesn’t even make the CDC’s list; almost half of women assumed they couldn’t get pregnant (44 percent), didn’t mind getting pregnant (23 percent), didn’t plan to have sex (14 percent), or worried about the side effects of birth control (16 percent). In fact, the word access appears only once in this study of contraceptive use, and only in the context of health insurance, not contraception.
I’ll repeat what I argued over the weekend: Obama is not doing this because there is a problem he believes must be solved; he is doing it because he believes he can get away with it. And if Obamacare is not repealed, he’s likely to be proved correct.