Catholic bishops have loudly opposed the Obama administration’s plan to expand contraception access, despite the fact that a majority of Catholics disagree with the church’s position. New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan even has claimed that expanding access to birth control would spread “secularism.” But in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Jansing, Dolan conceded that most Catholics reject the Church’s prohibition on birth control and likely support the administration’s compromise:

CHRIS JANSING (MSNBC HOST): Do you think Catholics will vote on the birth control issue, for example?

DOLAN: No, I don’t think they’d do that. [...] You are right, and many people are right, when they say bishops, I don’t know if you’ve got your people with you on the specific issue of contraception.

Watch the MSNBC interview here starting at 2:30:

A recent Gallup poll shows that Catholics are not turning away from President Obama because of the contraception debate. Even though the Catholic Church has attacked the Obama administration, Obama has a six-point lead over Mitt Romney, who opposes the contraception regulation, among Catholic voters.

Despite the fact that many government health programs can save money and lives, Republicans are still trying to chip away at the safety net for the least fortunate. Recently, they turned to incentives designed to help children gain access to better health care.

As part of an effort to reduce health spending by $115 billion, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted last week to cut $400 million from a program designed to make it easier for children in lower-income families to gain insurance through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and offer bonuses to states that see increases. According to Politico, 23 states have received bonus money for enrolling more children, with 16 of those boosting enrollment by more than 10 percent. While the proposal’s immediate future is dim, opponents say there is a chance it could resurface later on:

Although the Senate is unlikely to pick up this measure, [Executive Director of Families USA Ron] Pollack said he’s concerned it could reappear when Congress returns after the elections with a full plate of legislation in need of offsets.

“When you start with the House-passed budget and efforts like this, while it’s clear that they’re not going to become law, it’s just part of an opening bell about how the Republicans in the House want to handle a larger effort that will take place some time after the elections,” he said.

The lead sponsor of this bill, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), claimed weakening the eligibility requirements to boost coverage encouraged more people to try and game the system. But as Politico noted, the study he cited to back up his claim did not include any data specific to the bonus program Republicans are seeking to cut.

Here is what CHIP actually has done: It has helped cut the national rate of uninsured children to the lowest recorded level ever, keeping millions from losing all health coverage, and pushing long-term health costs lower. The program Republicans want to cut, meanwhile, paid out close to $300 million in bonuses last year alone and has already encouraged states to streamline their enrollment processes, eliminating bureaucratic waste.

The Republican budget presented by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) would make dramatic cuts to child care funding and nutrition programs, and leave millions uninsured or underinsured.

-Zachary Bernstein

Millions of American women would lose access to affordable health care coverage if the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare, a new report by Jessica Arons from the Center for American Progress argues. Since women are more likely to consume health care services, use prescription medication, suffer from chronic illness, and face discrimination in the individual health market, they “will suffer the most” from a negative Court decision.

The report claims that to invalidate the law in part or in whole would turn back the clock on the health care system and ensure that women are routinely discriminated against because of their gender and denied coverage for basic benefits in the individual health care market:

Those without a source of employer-sponsored coverage must purchase health insurance in the individual market—a market that routinely discriminates against women. Through a practice known as gender rating, women pay $1 billion more in premiums than men each year for the same set of benefits. And even though they pay more, they often receive fewer benefits. Individual market plans often exclude essential health services for women, such as maternity care, contraception, and Pap smears. And women are subject to coverage exclusions by health insurance providers in the individual market for gender-specific “pre-existing conditions” such as breast cancer, Cesarean sections, rape, and domestic violence.

Due to their higher utilization of health care, their higher premiums and cost-sharing burdens, and the lower levels of coverage for women-specific conditions, women have higher out-of-pocket costs than men and are also more likely to experience medical bankruptcy. Women of reproductive age spend 68 percent more on their health care expenses than men, and non-elderly adult women are more likely to be underinsured, meaning that they have out-of-pocket costs that total over 10 percent of their income.

Women have gained so much from Obamacare, but stand to lose it all should the Court — or Republicans in Congress — undo these advances:

Read the full report here.

Republicans across the country have pushed for a slew of abortion regulations that limit women’s access to health care. State lawmakers have considered measures that put up more hurdles for women seeking abortions, with the goal of ultimately preventing them from having the procedure.

Pennsylvania was one of 17 states to consider requiring women to undergo an unnecessary ultrasound before an abortion, which Gov. Tom Corbett (R) supported even though the House stopped the bill. He defended the measure by telling women “you just have to close your eyes” if they didn’t want to see the ultrasound. And in an interview with UW Election Eye, Corbett said he supported the abortion bill in the hope that it would stop women from having an abortion:

CORBETT: I think we have over 30,000 abortions a year in Pennsylvania. [...] I think adoption is a much preferable way to go. When you see that kind of number, if an ultrasound, which is not invasive at all, would convince somebody maybe to carry that baby to term and give it up for adoption and save that life, I think that’s the way to go.

Watch here:

Research has shown that seeing an ultrasound does not lead women to change their minds about having an abortion. Instead, it only forces women to jump through more time-consuming hoops before they can have a medical procedure.