Gov. Scott Walker wants to again give insurance companies discretion over whether they will cover contraception.

His budget, released Tuesday, proposes the elimination of a recently passed law that requires insurance plans that cover prescription drugs to also include coverage for prescription birth control. Walker’s budget summary says the requirement is an “unacceptable government mandate on employers with moral objections to these services,” and that it “increases the cost of health insurance for all payers.”

The law was included in the 2009 budget signed by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle and first went into effect on Jan. 1, 2010. For Rep. Terese Berceau, in particular, it was a long time in coming. The Democrat from Madison first introduced such a bill in 1999, saying that “access to affordable and quality health care for women should no longer be a luxury.” And she has long argued that allowing insurance companies to consider contraception “optional care” places “excessive financial burdens upon women of reproductive age.”

Anti-abortion activists and the Catholic Diocese of Madison have opposed attempts to pass the mandate. But with support from public health and family planning groups, a Democratic-controlled Legislature in 2009 finally passed the measure.