Yesterday, Senate Democrats voted to kill Sen. Roy Blunt’s (R-MO) amendment that would have restored the rights of religious institutions to not be forced to pay for things like contraception coverage that violate their religious beliefs. Democrats lined up against religious liberty and in favor of a mandate requiring religious employers to pay for insurance coverage than includes contraception issued by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius authorized by President Obama’s unpopular health care law.

The Wall Street Journal editors point out the outrageous lengths Democrats went to try to change the issue from one of protecting religious liberty to a fantasy attack on women’s health. “Nancy Pelosi called it ‘devastating legislation’ and ‘the latest ploy in the Republican agenda of disrespecting the health of American women.’ Planned Parenthood claimed the ‘dangerous proposal’ would have allowed ‘your boss’—yes, yours—to decide ‘which prescriptions you can get filled and which medical procedures you can have,’ including cancer screening, maternity care and AIDS medications. It sounds medieval. But in fact, the provision that the Senate tabled yesterday would merely have restored the status quo ante of one month ago. Those were the dark ages before the Obama Administration overturned traditional conscience protections with its birth-control insurance mandate under the Affordable Care Act.”

Democrats’ distortions about the vote have been so egregious, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker awarded “Three Pinocchios” to Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) rhetoric on the subject, writing, “Schumer’s comments ooze hyperbole and alarmist language. Beyond that, he has to rely on legalistic interpretations to defend them. As for the senator’s slippery slope argument, we find that accepting such reasoning is a bit of a slippery slope itself. It’s a favorite of politicians who want to draw loose connections rather than debate the merits of a proposal as it stands. Overall, Schumer earns three Pinocchios for his comments about the Blunt Amendment.”

The WSJ editors explain, “The amendment had nothing to do with a ‘ban’ on contraception, or any of the other delusions and distortions of the left. The real issue is that the ObamaCare mandate requires employers, including religious schools and hospitals, to buy coverage that may violate their moral beliefs. The Blunt amendment would merely have let those religious-affiliated institutions provide coverage without paying for care that violates their religious conscience.”

As The Wall Street Journal editors write, “[O]ne thing this fracas did prove is that Americans do not like health-care mandates—which is why liberals stole the language of anti-coercion to defend their coercion. . . . The real offense against freedom and women is the mandate. The fact that Democrats don’t dare to accurately describe their own positions, or the regulations that they want to foist on everyone else, shows how extreme those positions and regulations really are.”

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