Mitt Romney’s Republican rivals have called him a weak candidate. Their motives are purely political, and wrong, but they’ve got the label right.

Romney’s constant backpedaling on issues he once supported, like universal health care, has given the impression of a man without a center. The most recent episode came during an interview with an Ohio news network in which Romney said he did not support a bill sponsored by Missouri Senator Roy Blunt that would allow employers to deny coverage of their employees contraceptive care on religious grounds. The bill was in response to an Obama administration mandate that employers pay for their employees’ birth control needs.

Romney said, correctly, that the presidential primaries needed to be about bigger things than birth control. “I’m not for the bill, but look, the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a women, husband and wife, I’m not going there,” was his response to the question.

But later that same day, Romney reversed his position. During an interview with a reporter for the Boston Herald, Romney said he had “always” supported the bill. When questioned about the sudden change, his aids claimed that he had misunderstood the earlier question. Transcripts of the Ohio interview clearly show that the reporter had accurately described the bill and the reasoning behind it.

Romney’s flip flops on controversial issues to appease conservative voters have become so commonplace that they’re no longer front page news. But a few days later, on the same question of employer support for employee birth control costs, Romney took another nose dive which could, and should, come back to haunt him if he manages to actually win the Republican nomination.

In response to a Georgetown Law School student, Sandra Fluke, who had testified before Congress that employers should pay for their workers’ contraceptive care, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh called Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute.” Worse, Limbaugh suggested that Fluke should post videos of herself having sex on YouTube, “…so we can all watch.”

When a reporter asked Romney to comment on Limbaugh’s rant, how did the Republican frontrunner and would-be leader of the American people respond?

“Not the words I would have used,” said Romney.

That almost sounds as if Romney agrees with Limbaugh’s deeply offensive comments. He would have just used less colorful language. Or does Romney believe, as is probably the case, that women who testify before the US Congress should not be subjected to vile, personal attacks by conservative media celebrities?

We’ll never know what Romney actually thinks about Limbaugh’s comments, and that’s not okay. Romney’s defenders point out that Limbaugh is just a right wing radio shock jock whose job is to sell advertising by vilifying Democrats, liberals, intellectuals, and all others who disagree with his angry, narrow world view. He’s not a politician or presidential contender, so it made no sense for Romney to take him on.

But Limbaugh is also one of the most influential opinion leaders of the Republican party. Romney should have had the courage to clearly and unequivocally condemn Limbaugh’s comments. He might have alienated ultraconservative voters who enjoy Limbaugh’s witless drivel, but he would have demonstrated to millions of American women, Democrats and Republicans, who were deeply offended by Limbaugh’s sexist comments that he has the backbone to do the right thing when necessary. Instead, Romney wimped out by uttering the most neutral, noncommittal comment his staffers could concoct.

If Romney can’t put politics aside for one moment and stand up to a bully like Limbaugh, who will he stand up to? He may be the best choice among the three remaining Republican contenders, but so far Romney has shown little of the leadership and judgment necessary for the office he aspires to.

Image Courtesy of  Gage Skidmore

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The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), the national coalition of religious denominations and groups dedicated to reproductive justice, launched a national campaign to demonstrate the widespread support for expanded access to birth control and contraception among people of faith.

The campaign – “I’m a Fan of Birth Control” – involves hundreds of clergy and religious leaders and activists of all faiths in public awareness and educational programs about the importance of birth control as preventive health care for women.

“The Catholic hierarchy and some religious extremist groups have turned the inclusion of contraception coverage in the health care law into a public battle about their ‘religious freedom.’ The opposite is the case. They are using religion as a cover to discriminate against women,” said Reverend Alethea Smith-Withers of the RCRC Board of Directors.

“While we respect that there are differing religious views on contraception, the fact is that religiously affiliated employers that are objecting to covering birth control in their health plans are publicly funded, serve the public, and employ people of all faiths. They must comply with the law,” she said. Strictly religious institutions such as churches that exist to inculcate religious faith are already exempt from this law.

Denominations with official positions and statements favoring the use of contraception and birth control include The Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ, The United Methodist Church, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism. Excerpts of denominational statements are available on the RCRC website at www.rcrc.org.

RCRC’s position on contraceptive coverage is that access to birth control should be a priority for all society and should be covered by health plans and insurers as preventive care. The decision to become pregnant and have children is one of the most important decisions couples and individuals can make. Full access to birth control, without co-pays or other obstacles, is a key factor in enabling women to reach their potential and in building strong families.

Access to contraception helps to protect the health of women and children, reduce child and spousal abuse, prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, and treat serious medical conditions such as endometriosis. As an organization dedicated to justice, RCRC believes that society has the responsibility to create the economic, social and cultural conditions that support all members of society and to provide generously for children’s health, education and well-being.

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, founded in 1973, is an interfaith coalition of religious denominations and religiously affiliated organizations, theologians, clergy and seminarians, grass roots advocates, and youth on campuses across the country.

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The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have issued the following statement: The Catholic bishops have long supported access to life-affirming healthcare for all, and the conscience rights of everyone involved in the complex process of providing that healthcare.

That is why we raised two serious objections to the “preventive services” regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in August 2011.

First, we objected to the rule forcing private health plans—nationwide, by the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen—to cover sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause abortion. All the other mandated “preventive services” prevent disease, and pregnancy is not a disease.Moreover, forcing plans to cover abortifacients violates existing federal conscience laws. Therefore, we called for the rescission of the mandate altogether.

Second, we explained that the mandate would impose a burden of unprecedented reach and severity on the consciences of those who consider such “services” immoral: insurers forced to write policies including this coverage; employers and schools forced to sponsor and subsidize the coverage; and individual employees and students forced to pay premiums for the coverage.

We therefore urged HHS, if it insisted on keeping the mandate, to provide a conscience exemption for all of these stakeholders—not just the extremely small subset of “religious employers” that HHS proposed to exempt initially.

The President has done two things.

First, he has decided to retain HHS’s nationwide mandate of insurance coverage of sterilization and contraception, including some abortifacients. This is both unsupported in the law and remains a grave moral concern. We cannot fail to reiterate this, even as so many would focus exclusively on the question of religious liberty.

Second, the President has announced some changes in how that mandate will be administered, which is still unclear in its details. As far as we can tell at this point, the change appears to have the following basic contours:

• It would still mandate that all insurers must include coverage for the objectionable services in all the policies they would write. At this point, it would appear that self-insuring religious employers, and religious insurance companies, are not exempt from this mandate.
• It would allow non-profit, religious employers to declare that they do not offer such coverage. But the employee and insurer may separately agree to add that coverage. The employee would not have to pay any additional amount to obtain this coverage, and the coverage would be provided as a part of the employer’s policy, not as a separate rider.
• Finally, we are told that the one-year extension on the effective date (from August 1, 2012 to August 1, 2013) is available to any non-profit religious employer who desires it, without any government application or approval process.

These changes require careful moral analysis, and moreover, appear subject to some measure of change. But we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders—for self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals—is unacceptable and must be corrected.

And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer. This, too, raises serious moral concerns.

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The Obama administration, to justify its widely criticized mandate for contraception and sterilization coverage in private health plans, has posted a set of false and misleading claims on the White House blog (“Health Reform, Preventive Services, and Religious Institutions,” February 1).  In what follows, each White House claim is quoted with a response.

Claim: ”Churches are exempt from the new rules: Churches and other houses of worship will be exempt from the requirement to offer insurance that covers contraception.”

Response: This is not entirely true.  To be eligible, even churches and houses of worship must show the government that they hire and serve primarily people of their own faith and have the inculcation of religious values as their purpose.  Some churches may have service to the broader community as a major focus, for example, by providing direct service to the poor regardless of faith.

Such churches would be denied an exemption precisely because their service to the common good is so great.  More importantly,   the vast array of other religious organizations – schools, hospitals, universities, charitable institutions – will clearly not be exempt.

Claim: “No individual health care provider will be forced to prescribe contraception: The President and this Administration have previously and continue to express strong support for existing conscience protections.  For example, no Catholic doctor is forced to write a prescription for contraception.”

Response:  It is true that these rules directly apply to employers and insurers, not providers, but this is beside the point:   The Administration is forcing individuals and institutions, including religious employers, to sponsor and subsidize what they consider immoral.

Less directly, the classification of these drugs and procedures as basic “preventive services” will increase pressures on doctors, nurses and pharmacists to provide them in order to participate in private health plans – and no current federal conscience law prevents that from happening.

Finally, because the mandate includes abortifacient drugs, it violates one of the “existing conscience protections” (the Weldon amendment) for which the Administration expresses “strong support.”

Claim: “No individual will be forced to buy or use contraception: This rule only applies to what insurance companies cover.  Under this policy, women who want contraception will have access to it through their insurance without paying a co-pay or deductible.   But no one will be forced to buy or use contraception.”

Response: The statement that no one will be forced to buy it is false.  Women who want contraception will be able to obtain it without co-pay or deductible precisely because women who do not want contraception will be forced to help pay for it through their premiums.  This mandate passes costs from those who want the service, to those who object to it.

Claim: ”Drugs that cause abortion are not covered by this policy:  Drugs like RU486 are not covered by this policy, and nothing about this policy changes the President’s firm commitment to maintaining strict limitations on Federal funding for abortions. No Federal tax dollars are used for elective abortions.”

Response: False.  The policy already requires coverage of Ulipristal (HRP 2000 or “Ella”), a drug that is a close analogue to RU-486 (mifepristone) and has the same effects.[i]  RU-486 itself is also being tested for possible use as an “emergency contraceptive” – and if the FDA approves it for that purpose, it will automatically be mandated as well.

Claim: “Over half of Americans already live in the 28 States that require insurance companies cover contraception: Several of these States like North Carolina, New York, and California have identical religious employer exemptions.  Some States like Colorado, Georgia and Wisconsin have no exemption at all.”

Response: This misleads by ignoring important facts, and some of it is simply false.  All the state mandates, even those without religious exemptions, may be avoided by self-insuring prescription drug coverage, by dropping that particular coverage altogether, or by taking refuge in a federal law that pre-empts any state mandates (ERISA).

None of these havens is available under the federal mandate.   It is also false to claim that North Carolina has an identical exemption.  It is broader:  It does not require a religious organization to serve primarily people of its own faith, or to fulfill the federal rule’s narrow tax code criterion.

Moreover, the North Carolina law, unlike the federal mandate, completely excludes abortifacient drugs like Ella and RU-486 as well as “emergency contraceptives” like Preven.

Claim: “Contraception is used by most women: According to a study by the Guttmacher Institute, most women, including 98 percent of Catholic women, have used contraception.”

Response: This is irrelevant, and it is presented in a misleading way. If a survey found that 98% of people had lied, cheated on their taxes, or had sex outside of marriage, would the government claim it can force everyone to do so? But this claim also mangles the data to create a false impression.

The study actually says this is true of 98% of “sexually experienced” women.  The more relevant statistic is that the drugs and devices subject to this mandate (sterilization, hormonal prescription contraceptives and IUDs) are used by 69% of those women who are “sexually active” and “do not want to become pregnant.”  Surely that is a minority of the general public, yet every man and woman who needs health insurance will have to pay for this coverage.

The drugs that the mandate’s supporters say will be most advanced by the new rule, because they have the highest co-pays and deductibles now, are powerful but risky injectable and implantable hormonal contraceptives, now used by perhaps 5% of women.  The mandate is intended tochange women’s reproductive behavior, not only reflect it.

Claim: “Contraception coverage reduces costs: While the monthly cost of contraception for women ranges from $30 to $50, insurers and experts agree that savings more than offset the cost.  The National Business Group on Health estimated that it would cost employers 15 to 17 percent more not to provide contraceptive coverage than to provide such coverage, after accounting for both the direct medical costs of potentially unintended and unhealthy pregnancy and indirect costs such as employee absence and reduced productivity.”

Response: The government is violating our religious freedom to save money?  If the claim is true it is hard to say there is a need for a mandate: Secular insurers and employers who don’t object will want to purchase the coverage to save money, and those who object can leave it alone.

But this claim also seems to rest on some assumptions: That prescription contraceptives are the only way to avoid “unintended and unhealthy pregnancy,” for example, or that increasing access to contraceptives necessarily produces significant reductions in unintended pregnancies.  The latter assumption has been cast into doubt by numerous studies

Claim: ”The Obama Administration is committed to both respecting religious beliefs and increasing access to important preventive services. And as we move forward, our strong partnerships with religious organizations will continue.”

Response: False.  There is no “balance” in the final HHS rule—one side has prevailed entirely, as the mandate and exemption remain entirely unchanged from August 2011, despite many thousands of comments filed since then indicating intense opposition.  Indeed, the White House Press Secretary declared on January 31, “I don’t believe there are any constitutional rights issues here,” so little was placed on that side of the scale.

The Administration’s stance on religious liberty has also been shown in other ways.  Recently it argued before the Supreme Court that religious organizations have no greater right under the First amendment to hire or fire their own ministers than secular organizations have over their leaders – a claim that was unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court as “extreme” and “untenable.”

The Administration recently denied a human trafficking grant to a Catholic service provider with high objective scores, and gave part of that grant instead to a provider with not just lower, but failing, objective scores, all because the Catholic provider refused in conscience to compromise the same moral and religious beliefs at issue here.

Such action violates not only federal conscience laws, but President Obama’s executive order assuring “faith-based” organizations that they will be able to serve the public in federal programs without compromising their faith.

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