‘Blunt amendment' killed in Senate

Today the Senate showed that it still has the ability to act rationally and killed the amendment introduced by Senator Roy Blunt (R) seeking to grant corporations the right to ignore the First Amendment whenever they feel like it. Sadly, this undoubtedly won't be the last time that the conservatives try to further eviscerate the United States Constitution, but for today at least, liberty survives.

Article excerpt follows:

Birth control exemption bill, the ‘Blunt amendment,' killed in Senate
By N. C. Aizenman and Rosalind S. Helderman
March 1

By a largely party-line vote, the Senate on Thursday blocked a move to exempt virtually any employer with moral objections from the Obama administration's controversial birth control health coverage rule.

The measure, an amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) to a highway funding bill, was tabled—and therefore effectively killed—by a vote of 51 to 48.

Only one Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe of Maine voted against the measure. Three Democratic senators supported it, Robert Casey (Pa.), Joe Manchin (W.V.), and Ben Nelson (Neb.).

The measure was among the most sweeping of several congressional efforts to broaden the current religious exemption in the birth control rule, which only fully exempts explicitly religious organizations such as churches from its requirement that worker health plans include contraceptive coverage with no out-of-pocket charges.

Under the Blunt amendment, not only would church-affiliated organizations such as Catholic hospitals, universities, schools and charities have been free to opt out of the coverage, any non-religious employer with a moral objection would have qualified.

The amendment would also have allowed such employers to refuse to cover any other preventive procedures required under the administration's rule if they had a religious or moral objection.