Thank you, Joanna, for writing why the Obamacare mandate is so absurd. Most insurance plans cover it anyway, without the mandate that is coming next year. The attempt to FORCE the employer to offer coverage it morally opposes is the real issue. Government has no such right. Period. NEW PARAGRAPH: It was a blunder of massive proportions to pick this fight with the Catholic Church. There is no upside to it. Employees of these institutions are not deprived of birth control, as it is cheaply available in many places. But the rights of this institution are being violated, and the president will suffer for this further example of his over reaching governance. NEW PARAGRAPH: The final irony is that so many allies of the president have been granted waivers from the rules of Obamacare-union plans in particular. How can he explain granting unions a waiver from the over reach of Obamacare, while denying it to the Catholic Church?

I suppose some readers would get the message, "Ahh the market is quietly following the trend and responding". Perhaps, what I get out of it. As usual the American public doing its thing. I want to read this book but I don't want to pay what I believe to be the price of people knowing I read it. Just as they do with health care or every other program they desire, they want it but they don't want to pay for it or have others know that they want it. The mandate, oooh the mandate, the Church's position is nothing more than morally comical not even worth debating.

Good article about how disingenuous this entire debate really is. We do not have this discussion about the millions of life style decisions people make that damage their bodies like smoking and cost us billions in healthcare costs, poor work place productivity and numerous other expenses. We routinely cover smoking cessation programs and drugs in an effort to prevent this. Unwanted pregnancies probably cost us just as much if not more. If poorly prepared women, especially underage women end up with children they wer not ready to have the costs are often enormous. And besides preventing unwanted pregnancies contraceptives prevent HIV and STD transmissions - two other diseases with very expensive treatments. People who want to limit women' s access to safe and affordable means to controlling when they have children really want to make sure we are punished for having sex so they can impose their own moral code on us. A code many of these leaders do not seem to follow themselves. Oh I forgot, they are men and do not bear the brunt of unwanted pregnancies and childrearing.

I love the skiing analogy! It could go on and on. I will not pay for the consequences of your recreational sports--and, by the way, they cause a lot of expensive injuries. I won't cover your son's head injuries caused by high school football, I won't pay for your knee surgery required because of all that ice hockey you enjoyed, or your rotator cuff problem caused by all that recreational baseball pitching, not the foot problems caused by your long-distance running...

While I appreciate that you actually mention the lawsuit, the statement - therefore keeping the story in the news and the rhetoric at high pitch. Is false. The MS has buried it. Look up how much coverage the main news networks have covered it. As of last week it was 19 seconds

It's about time the Catholic Chuch starts paying taxes. It has become so political that its tax-exempt status really needs to be called into question. This whole thing is a political football in an election year and those who latch onto it as a way to bludgeon Obama are going to have about as much success with it as Scott Brown will have with the Indian thing and Elizabeth Warren.

As I had said, no one is being deprived of anything. Birth control is cheap and readily available for all who choose to use it. Requiring that it be provided free of charge is an over reach.

The analogy makes sense only if you argue that your health insurance policy should pay for your skis, hockey sticks etc. I don't think anyone is advocating that.