A new front in the assault on women's freedom: Anti-choice activists now going after birth control

THURSDAY, FEB 9, 2017 04:59 AM EST

Under Trump and a GOP Congress, anti-choice activists don't need elaborate excuses to go after contraception

AMANDA MARCOTTE

Most conservatives are masters of the bad-faith argument, but none so more than anti-choice activists. For decades now, anti-choicers have perfected the art of concealing their hostility to abortion and contraception with terms like “pro-life” and their supposed concern with “protecting women’s health.”

This disingenuous approach characterized the conservative response to a Department of Health and Human Services requirement, created under the Affordable Care Act, that requires insurance plans to cover contraception without a co-payment.

Until recently Republicans have framed their objections to mandatory contraception coverage with a religious freedom argument, arguing that the mandate offended the sensibilities of religious employers. Efforts to chip away at insurance coverage of contraception were largely focused on carving out broad exemptions for employers who claimed a religious objection to the mandate, instead of ending the regulation itself.

But now we’re living under President Donald Trump in an America shaped by Breitbart News, and right-wingers opposed to women’s reproductive freedom can zoom right past the euphemism and into the territory of belligerent misogyny.

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http://www.salon.com/2017/02/09/a-new-front-in-the-assault-on-womens-freedom-anti-choice-activists-now-going-after-birth-control/