What the Obama Administration Hasn’t Told You About the HHS Mandate – But DID Put in the Federal Register

Hint: The Main Purpose of the HHS Mandate is Not Birth Control

Nor is it Health Care

Washington, D.C. – Americans misunderstand the Obama Administration’s purpose in imposing the HHS contraception mandate, says the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“The HHS Mandate’s purpose is not primarily birth control, or helping lower-income families, or even health care. It’s about promoting the economic and social power of women relative to that of men,” said Amy Ridenour, chairman of the National Center for Public Policy Research. “Obama Administration says this openly in public documents – but in boring regulatory documents the public rarely reads.”

“Anyone following the HHS Mandate debate in the news media would think the issue is about providing birth control to workers who have trouble paying for it,” said Ridenour, “but if you read the Federal Register, another picture emerges. The HHS Mandate, it says, is about ‘gender equity interests’ and ‘addressing…. gender disparity.’ It’s about empowering women ‘compared to their male co-workers.’ In other words, radical feminism.”

“Equally interesting is what the Federal Register does not say,” says Ridenour. “It does not say that low-income families have trouble paying for birth control. It does not note that while the pill may be only $9 a month at Walmart, that $9 is a lot of money if you make minimum wage. It does not say both women and men tend to be better off economically, at least in the short run, if they do not have children to support, or acknowledge that while it is true that only women can get pregnant, it is not true that only women can use birth control or get sterilized. And it does not say that if anyone actually has a ‘right’ to birth control, then surely both genders have that ‘right’ equally, just as both have a responsibility to raise their children.”

Ridenour notes further that, “Under HHS mandate requirements, birth control pills for women are covered, but condoms for men are not. Sterilization for women is covered; sterilization for men is not.”

“The HHS mandate is about feminism. Health care is secondary. Perhaps even incidental,” Ridenour says. “If you doubt this, ask yourself: If the HHS Mandate is intended to help all working families afford birth control, why did HHS purposefully write it to exclude comparable benefits for men?”

Ridenour provides more details, including relevant quotes from the Federal Register, in a blog post, “The Secret Sexist Roots of the HHS Contraception Mandate.”

46 newspapers have published Ridenour’s op-eds on the HHS mandate in 2014 alone, including the Denver Post, Providence Journal, Las Vegas Sun, Arizona Daily Star, Boston Herald, Deseret News, Duluth News Tribune, Orange County Register, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and Omaha World-Herald.

Other publications by Ridenour on the HHS Mandate and legal challenges to it include: “A Quick Guide to ObamaCare’s HHS Contraceptive Mandate and Why the Supreme Court Should (and Will) Throw It Out,” “How Can Senator Patty Murray Be So Ignorant about a Law She Voted For?,” “9 Takeaways from the Hobby Lobby HHS Contraception Mandate Oral Arguments,” “Should Conservatives Choose HHS Mandate, Climate Change Positions Based on What is Likely to Win the Most Votes?,” “16 Seconds To Understanding the HHS Birth Control Mandate,” “Democrat Congresswomen Walk Out of HHS Mandate Hearing to Protest Omission of Witness Who Wanted to Talk About Something Else Entirely,” “Hobby Lobby’s Court Victory in HHS Mandate Case is a Victory for Religious and Economic Freedom: Claims of an ‘Attack on Women who Use Birth Control’ are Foolish Leftist Spin,” “Would Jesus Pay for Abortions?,” and “White House Birth Control Statistics Don’t Add Up.”

Amy Ridenour, founding CEO of the National Center and currently co-CEO with her husband, David Ridenour, has been interviewed on television or radio thousands of times, and had her op-eds published in newspapers thousands of times, on nearly every major national public policy issue since the National Center’s 1982 founding. Newspapers running her op-eds within the year include the Denver Post, Providence Journal, Las Vegas Sun, Arizona Daily Star, Boston Herald, Deseret News, Duluth News Tribune, Orange County Register, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Omaha World-Herald and many others. She discusses issues on Twitter at @AmyRidenour.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, three percent from foundations and three percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 96,000 active recent contributors.

Contributions are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated.

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The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.