.- In response to the claim that most women do not oppose the Obama administration's contraception mandate, journalist Kathryn Jean Lopez published a long list of notable women who object to the new rule.
“This administration is changing what it means to be American in this mandate,” Lopez told CNA on Feb. 20. “As the media enables the transformation, it really is every citizen's responsibility to turn down the noise and look at the facts.”
At a Feb. 16 Congressional hearing on religious freedom, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked, “Where are the women?”
Maloney and several other Democratic members of Congress left the room in protest before the second panel of the hearing, which featured the testimony of two women – Allison Garrett, senior vice president at Oklahoma Christian University, and Dr. Laura Champion, medical director of Calvin College.
Multiple mainstream news outlets have reported that the event as an “all-male hearing,” despite the presence of the two female witnesses during the second half.
Lopez, who serves as editor-at-large of National Review Online, said that Americans should be alarmed by “the rewriting of facts before our eyes.”
“Instead of making their case, the Obama administration has been flooding the media zone with misinformation, and many have simply parroted it,” she said. “It's shameless, really.”
In an answer to the repeated allegation that men are the only ones objecting to the mandate, Lopez compiled a list of more than 60 prominent women who have strongly opposed the new requirement.
Among those included on on the list are Harvard Law School professor and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon; superior general of Sisters of Life, Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, SV; president of Aquinas College in Tennessee, Sister Mary Sarah Galbraith, O.P.; and executive director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Kristina Arriaga.
The women, who are notable for their work as college presidents, academics, diplomats, journalists and leaders of religious organizations, have signed the “Unacceptable” protest letter that has been circulating among the nation's leaders over the last week.
The Obama administration has come under fire for the recently-announced mandate, which will require virtually all employers to purchase health insurance plans that cover contraception, sterilization and drugs that induce abortions at no cost to employees.
Faced with a storm of protest, the administration announced an “accommodation” for religious freedom on Feb. 10. Rather than directly purchasing the coverage they object to, religious employers under the new policy would be forced to buy health care plans from insurance companies that would be required to offer these products free of charge.
But many critics have been quick to suggest that insurance companies will factor the “free” contraceptives into the pricing of health care plans, and so employers will ultimately be billed for the coverage, thus forcing them to violate their consciences.
