Three sharp observations about the religious right's--and U.S. Catholic bishops'--phony, cooked-up war over the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act:
BooMan Tribune by way of Fred Clark at Slacktivist:
It simply never occurred to the Catholic Church to oppose health care plans that offer contraceptive coverage until opposing the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act became a priority for the Republican Party. In fact, until the contraceptive requirement became an issue in the 2012 campaign, numerous Catholic organizations and universities offered health plans that covered contraception.
Carol Howard Merritt at Red Letter Christians (again, see the preceding link to Fred Clark's Slacktivist site):
When we fight against contraception, we tell a generation of women that Christians don’t care about their education, productivity, or empowerment. We highlight the brooding sense that Christians don’t want women to be intelligent, working beings, but we want a woman’s worth to be solely based on her sexuality.
Mary Barker at Religion Dispatches:
Returning to the issue of insurance, if we accept that labor has a claim on production (labor sowed the seeds) then the wages and other forms of compensation it receives aren’t "given" by owners, but rather already belong to it. They are earned, not bestowed. Owners no more "give" compensation to workers than the latter "give" profits to owners.