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The question would be whether a church that has failed to persuade its own flock of the rightness of its position could persuade at least five justices.
Legislation introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to reverse the Obama administration’s birth control rule would effectively permit any employer to deny contraception coverage in their employee health plans, critics note.
The Rubio bill, The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, comes in response to a Catholic firestorm that the administration’s exemption on its birth control rule does not include religious hospitals and universities along with churches. But this bill appears to go far beyond that, permitting any employer to claim the religious exemption without a criteria.
The Vice President and others argued that this wouldn’t be seen as an issue of contraception – it would be seen as an issue of religious liberty. They questioned the polling of the rule advocates, arguing that it didn’t explain the issue in full, it ignored the question of what religious groups should have to pay for. And they argued that women voters for whom this was an important issue weren’t likely to vote for Mitt Romney, who has drawn a strong anti-abortion line as a presidential candidate, saying he would end federal funding to Planned Parenthood and supporting a “personhood” amendment that defines life as beginning at the moment of fertilization.
Political hands disagreed with that interpretation. Cultural issues will play a bigger issue in the 2012 election than they did during the economic crisis of 2008, they said. Some of the suburban women up for grabs in this election, ones who are starting to feel more confident about the economy, can be firmly won over if they learned about this rule – if they also were told that President Obama supported an exemption for houses of worship while Romney opposes not only abortion but federal funding for contraception.