Nick Baumann

News Editor

Nick is based in our DC bureau, where he covers national politics and civil liberties issues. Nick has also written for The Economist, The Atlantic, The Washington Monthly, and Commonweal. Email tips and insights to nbaumann [at] motherjones [dot] com. You can also follow him on Facebook.

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Obama Didn't Cave on Birth Control

—By Nick Baumann

| Fri Feb. 10, 2012 9:56 AM PST

President Barack Obama speaks on his birth control policy Friday afternoon. WhiteHouse.gov

So did Barack Obama fold?

On Friday, after taking heavy criticism from Catholic groups and the political right over a regulation that would have required religiously-affiliated hospitals and universities (not churches) to offer their employees health insurance that covers birth control (with no copays), President Barack Obama went on live television to announce a shift. Now, insurance companies will have to offer employees of religious organizations the birth control coverage directly, without charging extra for it. (The details of the new birth control coverage plan are here.)

Some media outlets will no doubt call this a surrender by the president. But it's not. Here's why:

Everyone who was going to get birth control coverage before will still have access to it. Employees of Catholic schools and hospitals aren't always Catholic, and most sexually active women who aren't trying to get pregnant use birth control. The new rule will not allow the religious views of the leadership of religiously-affiliated organizations to dictate whether birth control is provided to their employees. The intent of the first version of the rule was to make birth control easier to get. The new rule will achieve that goal. "No woman's health should depend on who she is, where she works, or how much money she makes," Obama said in his statement. This policy ensures that.
The coverage will still feature no copayments. The insurance companies that are being required to offer birth control coverage directly to the employees of religious organizations will have to offer it for free. There will be no difference in cost between the plan that covers birth control and the plan that doesn't. The Obama administration justifies this by noting that studies suggest that covering birth control is cost-neutral or even saves money for health insurers because it's cheaper than pregnancy; it spaces out pregnancies, leading to healthier kids, and has other beneficial health effects.
The policy change still won't satisfy the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which opposed the birth control provision from the start. It's not a cave if your opponents aren't getting what they actually want. What the bishops desire is for the entire birth control rule to be repealed. They believe that no employer—religious affiliation or not—should be required to offer birth control coverage. UPDATE, Friday 3:45 EST: The bishops have released a statement on the policy change that says they're "studying" it and it's a "first step in the right direction." It's unclear whether they'll ultimately retreat from their original position or simply say this attempt is a good step but not sufficient.
The most important reproductive rights groups—Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the American Civil Liberties Union, and so on—all support the policy shift. You can bet that these politically savvy groups would be hollering to high heaven if they thought that women had been betrayed.
This whole scuffle was an intriguing policy dilemma, pitting women's health advocates versus faith leaders waving the banner of religious freedom. But with this move, Obama has demonstrated that it's possible to sidestep the red-hot politics of the dispute and work out a reasonable policy outcome that's backed by reproductive rights groups and the Catholic Health Association. It's not likely, though, that the social conservatives who have bashed Obama as an implacable foe of religious freedom will give it a rest.

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Details of the White House "Accommodation" on Birth Control Rule

—By Nick Baumann

| Fri Feb. 10, 2012 8:25 AM PST

Pete Souza/White House

The White House will change its policy requiring employers to offer health insurance coverage to their employees that covers birth control at no cost. Previously, religiously affiliated employers other than churches—such as Catholic universities and hospitals—would have been required to offer the insurance to their employees. Now, according to senior White House officials, if a religious employer has a religious objection to providing birth control coverage, insurance companies will be required to offer the insurance featuring free birth control directly to the employees.

Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, the two most important reproductive rights organizations in the US, both support the White House's compromise, which ensures that women who work for religious organizations other than churches will have access to birth control without a copay. Sister Carol Keehan, the head of the Catholic Health Association, the main Catholic hospitals group, also supports the deal. Keehan and the CHA were key supporters of Obama's health care reform legislation, which the US Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed as written.

Obama's plan is unlikely to win the support of the bishops. In September 2010, when the policy was first being developed, the USCCB wrote a letter opposing requiring any employer—not just religious ones—to offer birth control coverage. Anthony Picarello, the USCCB general counsel who signed the letter, told USA Today on Wednesday that the bishops still oppose the entire policy.

Picarello told USA Today the bishops are worried about the problems the law creates for "good Catholic business people who can't in good conscience cooperate with this," and noted that if he opened a Taco Bell, he'd be forced to offer birth control to his employees. Only something like Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fla.) "Religious Freedom Restoration Act"—which would allow any employer, not just religious ones, to cite a religious objection and thereby avoid covering birth control—is likely to satisfy the bishops on this front.

Here's the full text of the White House's fact sheet on its decision:

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Catholic Bishops Want Entire Birth Control Rule Repealed, Not Just the Religious Exemption

—By Nick Baumann and Kate Sheppard

| Thu Feb. 9, 2012 8:11 AM PST

"Now close your eyes and think of Rome." thaagoon/ShutterStock

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the national political lobby for the Catholic Church in America, has been waging war on President Barack Obama's new rule requiring health insurers to cover birth control at no cost to women. The religious exemption in the Obama rule allows churches an exemption to birth control coverage, but still requires religiously affiliated schools and hospitals to provide insurance to their employees that includes contraception without a co-payment.

The bishops claim that exemption is too narrow. But they don't just want the religious exemption widened. They want the whole policy repealed. (Never mind that most employers have been required to cover birth control for years.) This USA Today story sort of buries this fact, but at least it acknowledges it:

The White House is "all talk, no action" on moving toward compromise, said Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "There has been a lot of talk in the last couple days about compromise, but it sounds to us like a way to turn down the heat, to placate people without doing anything in particular," Picarello said. "We're not going to do anything until this is fixed."

That means removing the provision from the health care law altogether, he said, not simply changing it for Catholic employers and their insurers. He cited the problem that would create for "good Catholic business people who can't in good conscience cooperate with this."

"If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell, I'd be covered by the mandate," Picarello said.

So in short, the bishops want your Catholic boss to be able to decide whether or not you have to pay full freight for your birth control. Not coincidentally, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has a bill that would do just that.

The problem with this argument is that if taken to its logical extreme, your boss could claim religious exemptions for all sorts of health care issues, whether you worked at Catholic Charities, Taco Bell, or anywhere else. Christian Scientists generally don't believe that people need pharmaceutical medicine at all. Scientologists don't believe in psychiatry. If individual employers are allowed exemptions to the birth control coverage mandate, the law could quickly be rendered meaningless.

Marco Rubio's Plan Could Cut Off Birth Control Coverage for Millions

How the Florida senator—and potential VP pick—aims to use religion to undermine Obama's health care policy.

—By Nick Baumann

| Thu Feb. 9, 2012 3:00 AM PST

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is considered a top contender for the 2012 Republican vice-presidential nomination.

A new bill introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a rising conservative star and leading contender for the Republican vice-presidential nomination in 2012, could cut off birth control coverage for millions of women who receive it through their health plans.

Rubio has sold his proposal—introduced January 31 as the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act," or S. 2043—as a way to counter President Barack Obama's controversial rule requiring even religiously-affiliated schools and universities to offer copay-free birth control to their employees. But health care experts say that its implications could be far broader.

If passed, the bill would allow any institution or corporation to cut off birth control coverage simply by citing religious grounds. (You can read the bill here or in the DocumentCloud embed below.) It has 26 cosponsors in the Senate; a similar proposal sponsored by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) has 148 cosponsors in the House. On Wednesday, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) vowed to repeal Obama's rule, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pointed to Rubio's bill as a potential model for doing so. Here's the key section of Rubio's proposal:

In English, this means that no entity has to cover birth control in a health plan if it can point to a religious reason for not doing so. And the entity itself is not required to have any religious affiliation. It could just be a plain old corporation. That means that if the middle-aged white guy who runs your company is religiously opposed to birth control, he can have it stripped out of your insurance plan—even if his Viagra is still covered. You could wake up the next morning and find you're paying full price for drugs that you once got for free or at much-reduced prices.

"This could be huge," says Judy Waxman, the vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center (NWLC). "It's clearly more than a million women who'd be affected if it were just hospitals and universities [that were affected], but under the Rubio bill it could be any employer. It could be millions."

[Read the full article]

The Republican War on Contraception

Not satisfied with restricting abortion rights, the GOP is now coming after your birth control.

—By Nick Baumann

| Thu Feb. 9, 2012 3:00 AM PST

Last year was not a great one for abortion rights. First, congressional Republicans attempted to deny statutory rape victims access to Medicaid-funded abortions (twice). Then GOP-dominated state legislatures pushed record numbers of laws limiting abortion rights, including proposals that could have treated killing abortion providers as "justifiable homicide."

Yet in the past six months, social conservatives have widened their offensive, and their new target is clear: Not satisfied with making it harder to obtain legal abortions, they want to limit access to birth control, too.

"Contraception is under attack in a way it really wasn't in the past few years," says Judy Waxman, the vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center. "In 2004, we could not find any group—the National Right to Life Committee, the Bush campaign, anyone—that would go on the record to say they're opposed to birth control," adds Elizabeth Shipp, the political director for NARAL Pro-Choice America. "We couldn't find them in 2006 either, and in 2008 it was just fringe groups. In 2010, 2011, and this year, it's just exploded."

The first sign of the new assault came last October, when Mississippi activists and congressional Republicans pushed legislation on the state and federal level, respectively, that would have treated zygotes—a.k.a. fertilized human eggs—as legal "persons." If the definition of legal personhood is changed so that it begins when sperm meets an egg, hormonal birth control or barrier devices that prevent zygotes from implanting in the uterine wall could become illegal, making using an IUD tantamount to murder. Yet some 40 percent of House Republicans and a quarter of their allies in the Senate back bills that would do just that.

[Read the full article]

Most of Obama's "Controversial" Birth Control Rule Was Law During Bush Years

The right has freaked out over an Obama administration rule requiring employers to offer birth control to their employees. Most companies already had to do that.

—By Nick Baumann

| Wed Feb. 8, 2012 2:10 PM PST

President Barack Obama's decision to require most employers to cover birth control and insurers to offer it at no cost has created a firestorm of controversy. But the central mandate—that most employers have to cover preventative care for women—has been law for over a decade. This point has been completely lost in the current controversy, as Republican presidential candidates and social conservatives claim that Obama has launched a war on religious liberty and the Catholic Church.

Despite the longstanding precedent, "no one screamed" until now, said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law expert at George Washington University.

In December 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that companies that provided prescription drugs to their employees but didn't provide birth control were in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex. That opinion, which the George W. Bush administration did nothing to alter or withdraw when it took office the next month, is still in effect today—and because it relies on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it applies to all employers with 15 or more employees. Employers that don't offer prescription coverage or don't offer insurance at all are exempt, because they treat men and women equally—but under the EEOC's interpretation of the law, you can't offer other preventative care coverage without offering birth control coverage, too.

"It was, we thought at the time, a fairly straightforward application of Title VII principles," a top former EEOC official who was involved in the decision told Mother Jones. "All of these plans covered Viagra immediately, without thinking, and they were still declining to cover prescription contraceptives. It's a little bit jaw-dropping to see what is going on now…There was some press at the time but we issued guidances that were far, far more controversial."

[Read the full article]

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House GOP Memo: "Abortion Is the Leading Cause of Death in the Black Community"

—By Nick Baumann

| Mon Feb. 6, 2012 9:31 AM PST

Anti-abortion billboards in Atlanta sparked a nationwide controversy last year as Georgia tried to pass a law outlawing abortion on the basis of race. Radiance Foundation

A House GOP memo obtained by Mother Jones argues for a controversial "prenatal discrimination bill" by referring to "black abortions" as distinct from abortions in general and claiming that "abortion is the leading cause of death in the black community." The memo (PDF) was circulated by Republicans on the House judiciary committee on Monday in advance of Tuesday's markup of Rep. Trent Franks' (R-Ariz.) Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act.

Franks' bill, which is also known as H.R. 3514, didn't make it out of committee when it was introduced in the last Congress. But the fact that it's now receiving a markup—a key step on the way to a floor vote—and that 78 cosponsors have signed on suggests that it could proceed to a vote of the full House before November's elections. In addition to banning abortions based on the race or gender of the fetus, H.R. 3514 would give a woman's family members the ability to sue abortion providers if they believed an abortion was obtained based on race or sex. Critics warn that it would be next to impossible to prove that an abortion was obtained on the basis of race or gender and fear the provision could lead to nuisance suits against abortion providers by family members who are opposed to abortion on principle.

Bills outlawing sex-selection abortions—a procedure most Americans oppose—have passed on the state level. But a bill outlawing abortions based on race ran into trouble in Georgia in 2010. As my colleague Stephanie Mencimer reported:

The campaign started with controversial billboards, which began popping up in the state after President Obama was elected. They featured a photo of a beautiful, sad black baby boy and the line: "Black children are an endangered species." Anti-abortion activists claimed to be out to save the black community from genocide at the hands of Planned Parenthood.

"The most pernicious part was, they're trying to hijack the civil rights legacy in the service of conservative causes, trying to appropriate the mantle of the civil rights movement in a really despicable way," says Loretta Ross, the national coordinator of SisterSong, a reproductive justice organization for women of color in Atlanta. She says the effort even featured white people singing "We Shall Overcome" at black women as part of a pro-life "freedom ride" bus tour that stopped at Atlanta's Martin Luther King Jr. Center.

As with the Georgia bill, backers of Franks' bill, including Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the powerful chairman of the judiciary committee, have pointed to a supposed epidemic of abortions based on the race of the fetus—an argument that dominates the memo below. As Ross told Mencimer, the whole notion of black women choosing an abortion because of the race of the fetus doesn't make sense:

"It's kind of hard to find evidence that a black woman is going to have an abortion because she's surprised to find her baby is black. It just strains credulity to think that's a problem," [Ross] says with a hearty laugh. "I mean, she wakes up in the morning and says 'Oh my god! My baby's black?'"

UPDATE: My colleague Adam Serwer notes that the essay the Republican memo cites as evidence that "a thorough review of the American family planning movement reveals a history of targeting African-Americans for 'population control'" is actually a thorough debunking of arguments like those in the memo that argues the opposite point. Here's a choice excerpt:

Activists are exploiting and distorting the facts to serve their antiabortion agenda. They ignore the fundamental reason women have abortions and the underlying problem of racial and ethnic disparities across an array of health indicators. The truth is that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy. This applies to all women—black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American alike. Not surprisingly, the variation in abortion rates across racial and ethnic groups relates directly to the variation in the unintended pregnancy rates across those same groups.

Also, it's worth noting, as Jill Lepore did in her excellent New Yorker essay on Planned Parenthood in November, that prominent black Americans such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. were supportive of birth control and family planning, and the history of race and abortion in America is more complicated than the GOP memo would lead you to believe.

You can read the House GOP memo below. (The Document Cloud embed might take a second to load. If it doesn't appear, try refreshing the page.)

Prosecutor: Campaign Worker's Arrest Not Obama's Watergate

—By Nick Baumann

| Thu Jan. 26, 2012 3:00 AM PST

But how do we know that the Clintons aren't behind all of this? The Death of Vince Foster/Screenshot

On Friday, Zachary Edwards, who worked as the Iowa new media director for President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, was arrested in Des Moines and charged with attempting to impersonate Matt Schultz, Iowa's Republican secretary of state. Edwards, who had been working for a Des Moines political consulting company with close ties to Iowa Democrats, was promptly fired.

To several right-wing news sources, not only was Edwards' guilt immediately obvious, so was the fact that his arrest likely represented one small piece of a conspiracy reaching straight to the top. "Much like Watergate, which began with a seemingly simple (if puzzling) burglary and ultimately unraveled the Nixon administration, it is impossible to say how far the trail of criminality will go," wrote Powerline's John Hinderaker.

"The big question is how far up it goes," pondered the notoriously conservative editorial board of Investors Business Daily, before speculating about Edwards' supposed ties to "the secretive rich-man's club known as The Democracy Alliance, and the loud crazies of MoveOn.org, both funded by socialist billionaire George Soros" and "a conspiracy to defraud democracy" involving "some of the highest political crimes ever."

Newsbusters, the site dedicated to "exposing and combating liberal media bias," speculated that the lack of coverage of the Edwards story meant it wasn't "safe" for the mainstream media to cover and insinuated that the Associated Press had purposely "avoided the damning details." (Glenn Reynolds, a.k.a Instapundit, promoted Newsbusters' coverage of the story.) And Hot Air wondered "what connections Edwards has to Democratic Party leadership" and "how many more Zach Edwards we can expect to find in Barack Obama's campaign this time around."

Since every journalist worth his salt would love to expose something "much like Watergate," I decided to try something the right-wingers hadn't thought of: reporting. The criminal complaint against Edwards (PDF) has a case number associated with it, so when I couldn't hunt down a number for Edwards himself, I tried the Polk County court clerk's office and Edwards' bail bondsman to see if he had an attorney. As it turns out, it was a dead end—Edwards apparently hasn't hired a lawyer yet or had one appointed for him. No one, at least, has made court appearances on his behalf.

But I didn't have to go to a defense attorney to find out that Edwards probably isn't part of a grand conspiracy. John Sarcone, the county attorney in charge of prosecuting the Edwards case, couldn't say much about the details because of Iowa ethics rules. But when I told him what Hinderaker and IBD had been saying about Edwards, he laughed. "People have got imaginations, I'll tell you that," he said. "I don't think that's the case at all. They ought to give those jobs to creative writers, because that's fiction."

The White House and the Obama 2012 campaign declined to comment as to whether the president might be involved in an obscure campaign worker's alleged plot against the Iowa secretary of state. I smell a cover-up!

Front page image: Pete Souza/White House

Report: Obama Team to Break Silence on Killings of American Terror Suspects

—By Nick Baumann

| Tue Jan. 24, 2012 9:55 AM PST

Flickr/change.gov.

The Obama administration will soon explain why it believes the president has the authority to kill American-born terror suspects abroad without charge or trial, Newsweek's Daniel Klaidman reported Monday. US drones have already killed American-born Al Qaeda propagandists Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, and, in a separate strike, Awlaki's 16-year-old, American-born son Abdulrahman. In October, the New York Times' Charlie Savage reported on the contents of a secret document prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that laid out the adminstration's legal rationale for killing the elder Awlaki. But the Obama administration has yet to publicly explain its controversial argument, and Savage and the Times have sued the government after trying and failing to obtain the OLC memo through the Freedom of Information Act. Now, Klaidman says, the White House seems poised to explain at least some of its reasoning:

In the coming weeks, according to four participants in the debate, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. is planning to make a major address on the administration’s national-security record. Embedded in the speech will be a carefully worded but firm defense of its right to target U.S. citizens. Holder’s remarks will draw heavily on a secret Justice Department legal opinion that provided the justification for the Awlaki killing.

But when you read further down in the Klaidman piece, it's clear that the government isn't preparing to say much:

An early draft of Holder’s speech identified Awlaki by name, but in a concession to concerns from the intelligence community, all references to the al Qaeda leader were removed. As currently written, the speech makes no overt mention of the Awlaki operation, and reveals none of the intelligence the administration relied on in carrying out his killing.

It's hard to see how this will make anyone on either side of the Awlaki debate happy. Secrecy hawks may be upset by even this much disclosure, and civil libertarians will wonder why the administration is speaking in vague generalities. Savage and the Times will almost certainly continue their lawsuit seeking the OLC memo about the killing, which is what's really at issue here. The Obama administration was willing to release the OLC memos related to George W. Bush's most controversial actions—namely, the brutal interrogations of non-citizens. It will continue to be difficult for the Obama team to argue that memos about their most controversial actions, the killing of citizens without charge or trial, should be exempt from the same type of disclosure.

Some Context on the Gold Standard

—By Nick Baumann

| Mon Jan. 23, 2012 7:08 PM PST

Tomislav Forgo/ShutterStock

During Monday night's GOP presidential primary debate on NBC, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), a prominent advocate of pegging the value of the US dollar to the price of gold, praised Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, for promising to appoint a federal gold commission to "look at the whole concept of how do we get back to hard money." Since there was little actual discussion of the gold standard as policy (President Richard Nixon took the US off gold in August 1971), it's worth examining what top economists think about it. In short, they don't think it's a great idea. The University of Chicago's business school recently asked several dozen top economists whether they agreed with the following statement:

If the US replaced its discretionary monetary policy regime with a gold standard, defining a "dollar" as a specific number of ounces of gold, the price-stability and employment outcomes would be better for the average American.

Every single one of the economists surveyed disagreed with the statement; i.e., they unanimously embraced the anti-gold standard view, differing only on the degree to which they disagreed with it.

Gold standard advocates will point out that many top economists missed things like the housing bubble and the financial crisis, and that establishment support for a view doesn't necessarily mean it's correct. That's true, but context is important, too.