Catholic bishops had a mixed reaction to President Obama’s new plan for birth control access, which preserves universal cost-free access and uses a Hawaii-type compromise to leave the religiously affiliated institutions out of the exchange of services between an insurance company and the employee. Catholic officials say President Obama called New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, [...]

House Speaker John Boehner, escalating the birth control access controversy, said in a rare floor speech today that the House would act legislatively to roll back the Administration’s policy of universal access, particularly as it relates to religiously affiliated institutions. The video of the short floor speech is above; the full text is below. In [...]

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has reportedly rejected a proposed compromise with the Obama Administration on birth control access rules for religiously affiliated institutions. The working assumption was that the “Hawaii compromise” would come into play. Under this regime, any exempt religious organization would have to tell enrollees how they could directly access contraceptive [...]

Administration officials are preparing the ground for some kind of rollback on universal access for birth control, after the US Conference of Catholic Bishops turned the issue into a major controversy. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney hinted at changes to the regulations, which would mandate free contraceptive coverage in health insurance plans, including [...]

As expected by TBogg yesterday, Karen Handel, the anti-abortion activist who wound up as a Vice President for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, has resigned from the organization. She delivered an angry resignation letter that once again contradicts official statements from the Komen Foundation during the week-long furor over their dropping of [...]

I didn’t think we had reached the point in America where providing free contraception would be seen as a risky political maneuver, but here we are. Last month, the Administration agreed to universal access to birth control as part of the Affordable Care Act. Insurance companies would need to provide coverage for contraception in both [...]

Well, that was pointless. After shifting rationales, unreliable claims of bravado and the resignation of top staffers, the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure has reversed its decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood, reinstating its donation to support breast cancer screenings at the organization’s clinics. Foundation President Nancy Brinker announced the reversal. I hope Susan [...]

The fallout from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity’s decision to eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings continues. Jeffrey Goldberg gets some inside knowledge. Komen’s public rationale for cutting off the funding claims to take the pressure off their own decision-making. They adopted a rule, they said, stating that any [...]

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure denied funding for breast cancer screenings to Planned Parenthood today, in an anti-abortion frenzy designed to hurt the women’s health provider. The effect was a glancing blow. In the past 24 hours, 6,000 donors have delivered $400,000 to Planned Parenthood, almost half of the annual donation from Susan [...]

TBogg has already done the heavy lifting here, so just a comment or two about the Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity dropping its support for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood. Unless they are putting all that money into finding that cure for breast cancer they’ve been chasing all these years, the practical [...]

With Rick Santorum poised to do well in Iowa today and perhaps play at least a barely-plausible role as an anti-Romney challenger for the GOP nomination, it’s worth looking for a moment at his priorities. Santorum’s tax policy would probably cause less inequality than his rivals. He wouldn’t eliminate the capital gains tax, only reduce [...]