American Civil Liberties Union

The Kansas legislature is not known for being friendly to women’s health. Just last year, the Kansas legislature took away family planning and reproductive health services in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood and prohibited women from purchasing comprehensive health care coverage.

Today, the Senate rejected the notion that your boss can decide that you shouldn't have health insurance for cancer screenings, or make you pay out of your pocket for your daughter's vaccinations. But how did such an extreme proposal like the Blunt amendment make its way to the Senate in the first place?

Two words: birth control. In 2012, almost 50 years after the Supreme Court first protected the right to contraception, and although virtually all women, of every religious background, use birth control at some point in their lives, some in Congress are leaving no stone unturned in an effort to roll back access to contraception.

The administration's actions should lay to rest arguments that religious liberty is under attack in this country.

(A version of this post was originally published in the Washington Post "On Faith" opinion section on Friday, January 20.)

Recognizing the importance of birth control to women’s health and lives, the Obama administration stood firm today against the political strong-arming of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other religious groups that oppose contraception. This is a major victory for women’s health that we should all celebrate. But the path to today’s victory was not a foregone conclusion.