The U. S. Senate on Thursday defeated an amendmentby Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) that would have granted an exemption to care providers and insurers unwilling to provide contraception coverage because of moral or religious objections. Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio co-sponsored the measure.
Supporters claim the requirements, contained in the Affordable Care Act health care reform law, violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Opponents called it an attack on women’s rights, and a means to force a company’s moral or religious views on employees who may not agree.
The web site Politico called the 51-48 vote a “high-profile setback in the fight over the Obama administration’s contraception coverage mandate.
A headline in the Christian Science Monitor said the amendment was “bringing the culture wars to Congress.”
Sen. Olympia Snowe joined nearly all Democrats to defeat the measure. The Maine Republican said this week she would not run for reelection.
Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania joined Republicans in support of the amendment.
Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill voted to table the amendment. McCaskill points out the state of Missouri has required this coverage for more than a decade while respecting the First Amendment. Her office offered this statement:
“If you believe in preventing abortions, like I do, then it only makes sense to ensure women have equal and universal access to birth control in a way that respects religious freedoms.”
“This amendment is too broad and seeks to address a problem that’s already been resolved. I’m encouraged that we can continue to move forward with a compromise that safeguards one of our nation’s most important founding principles of protecting religious liberty, while preserving women’s access to birth control and cancer screenings.”
Republican Congressman Todd Akin of Missouri is running for McCaskill’s Senate seat, and is a co-sponsor of a similar measure introduced in the House. Akin and his campaign blasted McCaskill for his support to table the Blunt amendment.
In a news release, Congressman Akin stated, “Senator McCaskill’s continued support for Obamacare and her willingness to be an accomplice in this outrageous bureaucratic mandate betrays the public trust.”
“This is finally a display of the audacity federal bureaucracies will impose on us under the train-wreck of Obamacare,” Akin said.
Speaking on his weekly conference call with Missouri reporters, Blunt said he will continue to support the legislation — voted down in the Senate in a 51-49 vote — but not based on politics.
“This is such a fundamental issue,” Blunt said. “It’s a long time before I run for office again, and I didn’t pursue this based on the politics.”
In remarks on the Senate floor ahead of Thursday’s vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) blasted the White House’s contraception rule as violating First Amendment rights.
“Look: this is precisely the kind of thing the founders feared,” McConnell said. “It was precisely because of the danger of a government intrusion into religion like this one that they left us the First Amendment in the first place, so that we could always point to it and say, ‘No government, no president has that right. Religious institutions are free to decide what they believe. And the government must respect their right to do so.'”
Blunt says the vote won’t be the end of the debate over the contraception coverage rule — and predicted that the Supreme Court might have the final say by striking it down.