UPDATE: I now think that I’ve botched this post, as I expect to confirm more fully soon. My apologies.
UPDATE 2: Here is my correction to this post.
John D.: To compound the inanity of the Democrats’ idea that the profoundly confused Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke is some sort of “expert witness” on the HHS contraception mandate, I’ll point out that the HHS mandate on employers has nothing to do with the insurance coverage that universities provide to their students. As the Department of Justice explains (p. 14 here) in responding to a “passing reference” in Belmont Abbey’s lawsuit against the HHS mandate,
Neither the preventive services coverage regulations [including the HHS contraception mandate] nor any other federal law requires [a university] to provide health insurance to its students — much less health insurance that covers contraceptive services.
Nothing in this point, I’ll emphasize, bears meaningfully on Belmont Abbey’s lawsuit, which principally concerns its obligations under the HHS mandate to provide coverage to its employees of contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization.
At bottom, Fluke’s testimony (even apart from her resort to unverifiable anecdotes about fellow students) doesn’t even have any connection to the HHS mandate. The fact that pro-HHS mandate propagandists are touting Fluke as their star witness is a stark sign of how empty their case is.