Congressional Republicans are pushing legislation to exempt all employers from providing contraceptive coverage if it goes against their beliefs.
In 2000, when
Iowa became one of the first states to enact a contraceptive mandate, the Republican Legislature overwhelmingly backed the bill, which has no exemption for religious employers of any kind.
Even one of the law's few opponents did not move to exempt religious employers at the time, records show. Republican Rep. Steve King, a leading conservative who was then a state senator, instead proposed to exempt employers who did not cover Viagra. "We were not fighting the battle over conscience protection then," King said in an interview this week.
In
Arizona, state Rep. Linda Binder, a pro-choice Republican, formed a bipartisan coalition to push her bill, which exempted churches but not other church-affiliated institutions, through the Republican-controlled Legislature. Then-
Gov. Jane Hull, a Republican and a Catholic, signed the measure into law.
In
New York, a similar law also won GOP support in the Legislature.
It was signed in 2001 by Gov. George E. Pataki, another Republican.
Four years later, the
Arkansas law easily cleared that state's Legislature, with help from Republican lawmakers, including two GOP cosponsors. Huckabee signed it in April 2005.
He defended the law in a statement. "Religious employers are not required to comply with this policy," he said. "My position is, and always has been, that religious entities shouldn't be forced to pay for contraception."
But
like the original federal regulation proposed by Obama, the Arkansas law did not exempt church-affiliated hospitals and universities. It exempts only "religious employers" that are nonprofit organizations whose primary mission is "the inculcation of religious values," and primarily employ people who share the same religion, a standard few Catholic hospitals meet.