Democrats and women’s health groups believe they have a powerful campaign weapon. Dems see Hobby Lobby fight at polls

With an eye on the November elections, congressional Democrats on Wednesday introduced a bill that would overturn the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby contraception decision.

Democrats and women’s health groups believe they have a powerful campaign weapon in pushing back on the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that Hobby Lobby and other closely held for-profit companies don’t have to comply with the health law’s contraceptive coverage requirement if it violates the owners’ religious beliefs.


The bill was drafted by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a longtime women’s health advocate, and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who is up for reelection this year. Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat up for reelection in Alaska, joined them at the press conference to release the bill.

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The Democrats’ bill would essentially exempt the Affordable Care Act from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the law that the Supreme Court said the contraception requirement violated. The bill would prohibit any employer that provides health plans from refusing to cover any item required by federal law. The legislation would preserve the administration’s accommodation for religious nonprofits and the exception for houses of worship, Murray said.

Democratic Reps. Louise Slaughter, Diana DeGette and Jerry Nadler plan to introduce a companion bill in the House.

They’re framing it as the court allowing gender discrimination and putting bosses in charge of personal health decisions to use contraception, even when medicine is prescribed for nonreproductive reasons, such as to treat endometriosis. And they want to make sure Republicans have to answer whether they support it.

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Republicans, however, say the dispute is about protecting everyone’s right to practice his or her religion, including business owners. They stress that removing birth control coverage from employee health plans doesn’t mean women cannot access it at all.

“While the Obama administration and its allies have tried to make this simply a dispute over birth control, the Supreme Court agreed that the real issue is whether the Obama administration can ignore the law and, in doing so, trample religious freedom,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said after the court decision was released.

Begich said the issue dominated discussions during his last weekend back home. “It is something that has woken up the women of Alaska,” he said.

Udall criticized the Supreme Court ruling, too, saying that it was akin to requiring women to obtain a “permission slip” to use contraception. Udall’s campaign has tried to focus attention on his opponent, Rep. Cory Gardner’s former support for “personhood,” which would give an embryo legal status from the moment of conception, essentially banning abortion and prohibiting certain forms of contraception.

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Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said she expects the contraception fight to resonate in North Carolina, too, where Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan — a co-sponsor of the bill — is in perhaps the Senate’s closest race. Hagan’s GOP opponent, Thom Tillis, swiftly came out in support of the court ruling.

“He has been four-square against women’s health care access of all kinds, and I think what this case does is reignite these issues,” Richards said in an interview. “Birth control in North Carolina is very popular.”

Planned Parenthood and EMILY’s List, a PAC that supports pro-abortion rights candidates, have already publicly committed more than a combined $6 million to Hagan’s race.

“Clearly the right and unfortunately the right wing of the Republican Party have ginned up this issue of birth control coverage,” Richards said. “They have engaged hundreds of employers to try to get them to file lawsuits. They’ve made this an issue now. From a women’s position, it’s ridiculous, but from a political position, it’s really, really unwise.”

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Republicans widely praised the Supreme Court’s ruling and are unlikely to support the bill. Republican Sens. Mark Kirk, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins — the moderate Republicans who are most likely to join Democrats — all told POLITICO on Wednesday morning that they had not yet seen the bill.

Murkowski said she was “somewhat surprised by the direction that the court took” but declined to say whether she supported the Hobby Lobby decision.

The Obama administration and its allies have warned that a court ruling for Hobby Lobby would open the door to other employers looking to not provide contraception or even other health products, like vaccines. But so far, only one additional company has filed suit against the Obamacare provision, and none has yet indicated that it wants to challenge other preventive care.