President Obama’s reelection campaign on Thursday mocked a Republican effort to restore conscience protections for religious institutions under the new health care law.
A post on the campaign’s official Tumblr site featured a tongue-in-cheek "Employee Authorization for Contraception" form, which implicitly accuses Republicans of trying to control women’s access to contraception, even though no Republican lawmaker has proposed such a ban.
"If Mitt Romney and a few Republican senators get their way, employers could be making women’s health care decisions for them," the post reads.
The statement is almost certainly a reference to the Respect the Rights of Conscience Act, an amendment offered by Sen. Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) that would have allowed employers to opt out of healthcare coverage mandates that violate their religious beliefs.
The Senate voted on Thursday to reject the amendment by a margin of 51 to 48.
Three Democrats—Sens. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) and Ben Nelson (D., Neb.)—voted for the measure. Only one Republican, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine), voted no.
The conscience protections included in Blunt’s amendment are identical to those proposed in the 1994 Democratic health care bill (aka "Hillarycare").