Michelle Andrews spotlighted the silver lining for social liberals in a Tuesday item for NPR.org about the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling. Andrews underlined that "women in most health plans will still be able to get their birth control covered with no out-of-pocket expenses," even after the five to four decision.
The writer turned to a policy expert at the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, which she merely labeled a "research and policy organization that focuses on reproductive health," but failed to cite any pro-lifers for their take on the issue:
The court ruling did not change the health law's requirement that preventive care services, including for women, be provided by most health plans to customers without cost....Moreover, many firms see a benefit in providing coverage for contraceptives, says Adam Sonfield, a senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that focuses on reproductive health.
"There are so many incentives for companies to cover contraception," says Sonfield, including cost savings to insurers and self-funded employer plans because birth control is cheaper to cover than maternity and delivery.
The journalist, who works for Kaiser Health News (a program of the aforementioned Kaiser Family Foundation, which has a joint partnership with NPR), later slanted towards opponents of the Court's ruling by outlining that "the Hobby Lobby craft store chain offered workers birth control coverage but objected to two IUDs and emergency methods such as Plan B and Ella that can prevent pregnancy if taken shortly after unprotected sex. The chain's owners argued that those methods induce abortions, an argument that many scientists dispute."
Andrews ended her short article by zeroing in on the legal challenges to ObamaCare's exemptions for religious organizations regarding the birth control/abortifacient mandate:
...[N]onprofit religious organizations that object to covering birth control, such as some Catholic charities or universities, can elect instead to have their insurer or third-party administrator pay for the workers' contraceptive coverage. However, that accomodation is being litigated, and the outcome for female employees of those sorts of organizations is not clear.
