In the spring of 2015, the governor of Indiana found himself in a political meltdown, facing a furious backlash from corporate leaders, activists and even the NCAA. The governor had just signed a "religious freedom restoration" law, which gave private businesses a green light to discriminate against anyone that business deemed to violate their faith, even refusing them service. Interpreting this law as a backlash against marriage equality laws then sweeping the country, the CEOs of huge companies like Yelp and Salesforce said they'd scale back their presence in the state. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, wrote in The Washington Post that such laws "rationalize injustice by pretending to defend something many of us hold dear." By signing the law, the then-governor of Indiana blared a message across the country that freedom in Indiana wasn't for everyone.

That governor, Mike Pence, is now the vice president, and his anti-democratic interpretation of "religious freedom" now has taken hold at the White House.

Today Donald Trump confirmed just how deeply that ideology now runs through our government when his administration ended a policy that requires employer-provided health plans to cover contraception as an essential benefit, just like other medications. By eliminating this advancement, employers will now be free to deny their employees coverage for birth control for nearly any reason, just so long as they claim it's for a genuine "religious" or "moral" reason.

Trump has hinted at this reversal for months. Standing in the Rose Garden back in May, Trump told conservative religious leaders that their "long ordeal" would "soon be over." Those in the audience that day knew that Trump was talking about more than just birth control.

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The president, Mike Pence and their right-wing allies have long pushed a fringe ideological agenda under the guise of "religious freedom." We saw this strategy play out when Hobby Lobby argued in front of the Supreme Court that the contraceptive coverage benefit harms employers whose religious beliefs object to birth control.

But it's all a lie.

This isn't about the fundamental, essential right to hold and express personal religious beliefs. All Americans share and cherish those rights, including me. No, this is about a small but loud minority who want to use the power of the government to force women to act in accordance with their own beliefs, and, as a result, to control our personal economic and family decisions.

This fringe movement isn't always so good at hiding its true intentions. This summer in Missouri, for example, with the help of local NARAL members, St. Louis passed an anti-discrimination ordinance that, among other provisions, forbid landlords from evicting a female tenant just because she uses birth control.

You might assume this wouldn't be controversial. Yet in response to the city ordinance, Missouri's hard-right governor, Eric Greitens, raced to action, calling an emergency session of the legislature to try to preempt the ordinance. Why? Because Greitens, a presidential aspirant, saw an opportunity to curry favor with far-right leaders who have used the guise of "religious freedom" to codify their oppressive beliefs into law.

President Donald Trump has embraced this anti-democratic movement with open arms. Seeming to lack any principles of his own, he sees it as "good" politics to merge this anti-woman faction with the casual misogynists who form another part of his base.

This convergence of previously disparate groups has given this movement unprecedented power while the rest of us face very real and grave threats to our rights and well-being. This is not just a fight for women, although that would be enough. It's not even a fight just for disadvantaged women, or underprivileged communities, although that too would be enough. The fight in front of us is a fight against concentrating more and more power among a smaller and smaller group of ideological extremists. And it's a fight we all have a stake in.

Even just as a policy matter, expanding contraceptive coverage has been the single greatest advancement in reproductive health care in a generation, making birth control affordable and accessible for millions of women. In financial terms, this single provision saves American women more than $1.4 billion a year on birth control.

Yet requiring contraceptive coverage also makes women in our democracy more free. In a recent Forbes essay, Melinda Gates said that "when a girl or woman has economic means in her own hands, it shifts the whole power dynamic in the family, whether it's with her mother-in-law or her husband. It's the beginning thing that unlocks a woman's potential."

Repealing the contraceptive mandate suffocates this potential – it robs women of the ability to control their own lives and to build their own power in our society.