Mitt Romney is vociferously attacking a provision in Obamacare requiring religious employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — but the healthcare bill he enacted as governor of Massachusetts also contained that requirement.
C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, told the Boston Globe that Romney’s criticism of President Obama is hypocritical because as governor he did not lift the state-level requirement of contraception coverage.
“The initial injury to Catholic religious freedom came not from the Obama administration, but from the Romney administration,” Doyle said.
“President Obama’s plan certainly constitutes an assault on the constitutional rights of Catholics, but I’m not sure Gov. Romney is in a position to assert that, given his own very mixed record on this.”
On a presidential campaign swing in Colorado, Romney told a crowd on Monday night that the Obama administration “said that the churches and institutions they run, such as schools and adoption agencies, hospitals, that they have to provide for their employees free of charge contraceptives, morning after pills — in other words abortive pills and the like — at no cost.
“Think what that does to people who are in faiths that do not share those views. This is a violation of conscience.”
Romney GOP presidential rival Newt Gingrich also has attacked Romney over the birth control provision.
“The Obama administration is raging a war against the Catholic Church,” Gingrich said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” last week. “Well guess what? Mitt Romney’s Romneycare — he specifically refused to exempt Catholic hospitals, he specifically cut funding for kosher meals for Jewish senior citizens in Medicaid in Massachusetts.
“There are a lot of parallels between these two guys. Romneycare and Obamacare are essentially the same.”
Gingrich also has gone after Romney for including Planned Parenthood “in the language of his healthcare plan in Massachusetts,” Politico reported.
Gingrich said: “In the long run, the Republican Party is not going to nominate the founder of Romneycare, a liberal Republican who is pro-abortion, pro-gun control, and pro-tax increase.”
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