Don't miss her excellent piece at the Atlantic:
The list of Catholics who have lobbied the administration to consider a broader definition of "religious employer" than now exists -- one that would cover institutions like Catholic universities and hospitals -- includes politically progressive Catholics who have been close allies of the White House, like Father John Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame who stood up to conservatives who wanted Obama disinvited from giving the school's commencement address in 2009. It includes pro-life Catholic Democrats like Senator Bob Casey, who now faces an even tougher reelection campaign in Pennsylvania because of his vote in favor of Obama's health reform plan. And it includes precisely those Catholic hospital officials and progressive nuns whose support of health reform provided reassurance and cover for the holdout Catholic Democrats who voted to make it law. In doing so, they made possible the largest expansion of contraception access in U.S. history.Without the work of women like Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, and Sister Simone Campbell of the Catholic social justice group NETWORK, there would be no health reform and therefore no contraception coverage mandate to argue over -- not just for the employees of Catholic hospitals and universities, but for the estimated 24 million other women who will benefit from this aspect of the law.So, yes, a little gratitude from women's health advocates and other liberals would be appropriate. Instead, when these Catholic sisters and others asked for some flexibility with regard to the mandate, the advocates pooh-poohed as irrelevant their concerns about religious liberty and insisted that "the bishops" were the only ones who had a problem with contraception coverage.The White House also bears its own large share of the blame for how it has mishandled the issue.
Read the rest right here.Also: Lawrence O'Donnell on how we got into this mess in the first place:
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