Obamacare and mandatory coverage of contraception

On July 19, 2011 the Institute of Medicine issued "Clinical preventive services for women: closing the gaps.

Please note a key provision of Obamacare requiring insurers to cover all contraception services, and pay attention to the squishy words--

a fuller range of contraceptive education, counseling, methods, and services so that women can better avoid unwanted pregnancies and space their pregnancies to promote optimal birth outcomes

These services will be included in the MINIMUM package of essential health benefits by August 2012. If you're an employer with 50 women, only 2 of child bearing age, too bad. This package will be available to all.

How long has contraception been pushed as the answer to 1) better health for women, 2) healthier "wanted" babies, and a 3) solution for poverty? But according the statistics half of U.S. pregnancies are unintended. This is a boon for pharmaceutical companies and various contraceptive technologies like IUDs and implants, but will the Catholic church's teachings on natural family planning be included in that "all contraceptive methods, as well as education and counseling?" I doubt it. But Catholic hospitals, doctors, nurses will be required to violate their beliefs and church teaching. If we still had a first amendment that protected religious beliefs from the government instead of the upside down 1962 decision by the Supreme Court based on no precedents and contrary to the what the Founders intended, religious groups would have a better case.

There are already law suits making their way through the courts.

“(It’s) whether or not people, or in our case universities, who have seriously held moral convictions against abortion, should nonetheless be required to pay for it and support it, and endorse it, in effect,” Armstrong said.

The departments of Health and Human Services and Labor and Treasury have been named in the lawsuit charging, “A deliberate attack by the government on the religious beliefs of the Colorado Christian and millions of other Americans.”