Trump ends ObamaCare contraception mandate, effective immediately

The Obama Administration went to court against the Little Sisters of the Poor - literally - to defend this odious part of ObamaCare. The Trump Administration will do no such thing. Today Presidetn Trump ended the practice of forcing employers to pay for their employees' birth control if they have moral objections to doing so. The left, predictably, is not happy:

Finally pulling the trigger on one of the longest-running questions about administration healthcare policy, President Trump on Friday officially rolled back the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. The action takes effect immediately. The rollback exempts a wide range of employers from the requirement that they offer birth control to their employees without co-pays or deductibles. It’s a sop to religious ideologues in the Republican base, and a flagrant attack on women’s reproductive health rights, and it’s abetted by a clutch of anti-contraception ideologues installed at the Department of Health and Human Services. They’ve been pushing to narrow women’s birth control choices for years with widely debunked pseudoscientific claims that birth control produces mental health problems and breast cancer, that it doesn’t work and that it promotes promiscuity.

That's Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik, who naturally misses the point entirely. At issue is not whether birth control is good or bad, safe or harmful, effective or useless. Everyone can decide that for themselves, and is free to purchase it if they wish, with their own money. The part of ObamaCare that Trump ended is the provision that forces employers who do have a moral objection to nevertheless use their money to pay for it on behalf of employees. Mr. Hiltzik's scoffing notwithstanding, that is a direct violation of their religious freedom because it forces them to spend their own money in violation of their beliefs. Whether liberals like Mr. Hiltzik find their beliefs persuasive is beside the point. It's not his money. It's theirs. Not all Christians object to contraception. In fact, apart from Catholics, most do not. I do not. But I might object to paying for birth control so an employee can have sex out of wedlock. That's none of my business, you say? Exactly. It's none of my business. So leave me out of it. If they want to go on the pill or use condoms so they can have sex with whomever, then let them pay for it with their own money. That keeps it their business and not mine. President Trump's action today made that official U.S. policy, protecting the rights of everyone in the bargain. Nice job, Mr. President.