House Speaker John Boehner cast the contraception mandate as perhaps the worst of President Obama’s health policies, calling it an “attack on religious freedom” that Congress would repeal.
“We’re allowing a wide open process to repeal it,” Boehner said of Obamacare, with particular reference to the mandate from Health and Human Services that would require religiously-affiliated institutions to provide their employees with contraception. “What’s ultimately at stake here is our First Amendment right,” he told attendees of CPAC 2012. “This attack on religious freedom can not and will not stand.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said yesterday that President Obama will not yield on the requirement that insurance policies provide access to contraception without copays, despite the outcry from religious leaders who call it a violation of their religious liberty.
The American Civil Liberties Union is trying to turn the religious liberty argument back on the churches, saying that they are “us[ing] religious to discriminate” against women who want contraception.
