In a major victory for conservative groups, the White House Office of Management and Budget is reviewing an interim rule that would allow religious employers to deny contraception coverage to their female employees. Vox.com obtained a copy.

Faith groups directly involved in religious ministry are exempt but religiously affiliated nonprofits like charities and hospitals were not. Some for-profit businesses, whose owners opposed on religious grounds, were not.

A draft HHS regulation would allow *any* employer to opt out of birth control mandate and take effect immediately. https://t.co/9KHCZGR1O8 — Sarah Kliff (@sarahkliff) May 31, 2017

With Trump in office and efforts underway to roll back Obama’s failed policies, the shoe is on the other foot and liberal Democrats are outraged. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the move “sickening.”

“The draft rule announced today attempts to tear away women’s control over their own private health decisions and put that control in the hands of employers and politicians,” she said.

Rather than tear away control from women, Trump’s changes will place them fully in control. Including in control of how to pay for their decision.

Conservatives generally agree that even if abortion is legal, it should not be funded by taxes. Contraceptives may be socially acceptable but the government should not be paying for them. Based on Kaiser Family Foundation reports, under the Obama mandate, taxpayers bought about 16 percent of the nations contraceptives.

Defenders often claim that Planned Parenthood provides many other services which make them necessary to the community but this is not supported by the figures. Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report shows as the number of abortions increases, fewer women are turning to the group for care like cancer services, contraception, and prenatal services.

Funds could instead be directed to the thousands of centers that provide health care for women without entanglement in on-demand abortion.

The mandate to provide fully covered birth control has angered conservatives, especially fundamentalist Christians since enacted under Barack Obama in 2012.

We got angry when Little Sisters of the Poor were forced to fund contraception for nuns. If that isn’t an obvious waste of money, I don’t know what is.

This month, Trump invited the Little Sisters of the Poor to the White House for the signing of an executive order requiring three departments to “address conscience-based objections to the preventive-care mandate,” Trump said that the Little Sisters had “sort of just won a lawsuit.”

We got angry when Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned craft supply chain, was strong-armed by the Obama administration to provide contraception coverage for their employees. The Supreme Court backed us up on that one in 2014, ruling that the law does not apply to closely held corporations.

Trump and the new administration are trying to do even better than that.

Trump’s appointment of Neil Gorsuch paved the way for the recent rule change by providing the Conservative movement with a voice on the Supreme Court to Replace Anton Scalia. As reported by Conservative Daily Post’s Donna Kay:

“Among other rulings he came to the national forefront when he sided in favor of ‘religious freedom’ in the well known case of the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby who challenged Obamacare. In that case, Gorsuch sided with the plaintiffs that it is a violation of the First Amendment to require those opposing birth control for religious to be forced to pay for it for their employees in the form of mandated insurance coverage. The US Supreme Court and Justice Scalia upheld Gorsuch’s opinion by rejecting challenges to the Hobby Lobby challenges to Gorsuch rulings, creating a firestorm liberal abortion supporting organizations like Planned Parenthood.”

Under the proposed changes, employers seeking an exemption would simply be required to make clear in their health plan documents that they do not cover contraception and would be required to notify their employees of any change in benefits. It would also allow individuals to object to participating in a health plan that covers birth control.

It’s as simple as that.

Any employer would be allowed to request a moral or religious exemption. This would widen the exemption to apply to any company from a small, religiously affiliated business to a large, publicly traded company.

“It’s just a very, very, very broad exception for everybody,” Tim Jost, a health law professor at Washington and Lee University, told Vox. “If you don’t want to provide it, you don’t have to provide it.”

The draft rule announced today puts control of private health right where it should be… in the hands of the individuals themselves, empowering them to take responsibility for their own decisions instead of having Big Brother making the decision for them. That is what Nancy is really crying about.