The men in the Republican Party may not think they’re fighting a “war on women,” but its female senators certainly do. Yesterday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) joined Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Kay Bailey Hutchison in criticizing the GOP’s push for legislation to restrict access to contraception and other basic health care services:

“It makes no sense to make this attack on women,” she said at a local Chamber of Commerce luncheon. “If you don’t feel this is an attack, you need to go home and talk to your wife and your daughters.”

Murkowski — who recently said she regretted her vote for the anti-woman Blunt amendment — promised to fight for Planned Parenthood funding and also spoke out against Rush Limbaugh’s attack of Sandra Fluke, adding, “To have those kind of slurs against a woman … you had candidates who want to be our president not say, ‘That’s wrong. That’s offensive.’ They did not condemn the rhetoric.”

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) came out today against a piece of legislation her fellow Republicans are advancing to stop the Obama administration’s new birth control rule. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), would go much farther the Obama rule and allow any employer to deny coverage for contraceptives and other preventative health care services to their employees. The measure puts “your boss in your bedroom and in between you and your doctor,” as ThinkProgress’ Josh Dorner noted, and could endanger millions of women’s insurance coverage for preventive health care.

Republican lawmakers have rallied around Blunt’s amendment. A vote is scheduled for tomorrow, attached to an unrelated transportation bill. But Snowe — who announced her retirement yesterday — said on MSNBC today that the Blunt Amendment goes too far:

SNOWE: With respect to the Blunt amendment, I think it’s much broader than I could support. I think we should focus on the issue of contraceptives and whether or not it should be included in a health insurance plan and what requirements there should be.

Watch it:

Fellow Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins joined Snowe in breaking ranks with the GOP to support Obama’s contraception rule, after he made an accommodation to religious organizations. So far, Collins is undecided on the Blunt amendment and others may oppose it too.

Sixty-seven percent of voters oppose legislation like Blunt’s, a recent poll found.

While GOP senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has pledged to fight the Obama’s administration’s modified regulation requiring health insurers and busnisses to offer contraception coverage without additional cost sharing, the revised rule “appears to have won over” two of the five Republican women senators.

Sens. Olympia Snowe (ME) and Susan Collins (ME) — both of whom have sponsored legislation requiring insurers to offer contraception benefits in all health plans — are in favor of the new compromise, which would allow religiously affiliated colleges, universities, and hospitals to avoid providing birth control. Their employees will still receive contraception coverage at no additional cost sharing directly from the insurer:

“It appears that changes have been made that provide women’s health services without compelling Catholic organizations in particular to violate the beliefs and tenets of their faith,” Snowe said in a statement. “According to the Catholic Health Association, the administration ‘responded to the issues [they] identified that needed to be fixed,’ which is what I urged the president to do in addressing this situation.

“While I will carefully review the details of the president’s revised proposal, it appears to be a step in the right direction,” Collins said in a statement. “The administration’s original plan was deeply flawed and clearly would have posed a threat to religious freedom. It presented the Catholic Church with its wide-ranging social, educational, and health care services, and many other faith-based organizations, with an impossible choice between violating their religious beliefs or violating federal regulations. The administration has finally listened to the concerns raised by many and appears to be seeking to avoid the threat to religious liberties posed by its original plan.”

Republicans in the senate seem determined to oppose the compromise and have introduced legislation that would allow employers or individuals to opt out of any benefit that undermines their moral beliefs. “They don’t have the authority under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution to tell someone in this country or some organization in this country what their religious beliefs are,” McConnell told “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “This issue will not go away until the administration simply backs down,” he said.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), who led the GOP’s opposition to the original rule, has yet to issue a statement on the measure and did not respond to ThinkProgress’ query about her position. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) also did not respond. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) co-sponsored a 1999 bill requiring contraception equity in insurance coverage and has not yet to weigh in on the current debate.

Republicans have gone to war against President Obama’s regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage, portraying the measure as a “government takeover” of health care and pledging to repeal the rule in Congress. The measure, which is part of the Affordable Care Act, says that companies offering coverage must also provide birth control insurance (but exempts houses of worship and nonprofits primarily employing and serving those of the same faith).

The Obama measure closely resembles state laws providing equity in insurance coverage for contraception in six states and actually offers far more conscience protections than previous Congressional efforts to expand women’s access to birth control. For instance, a 2001 bill co-sponsored by Republicans Sens. Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins (ME), Lincoln Chafee (RI), Gordon Smith (OR), John Warner (VA), Arlen Specter (PA) — S. 104 — sought to establish parity for contraceptive prescriptions within the context of coverage already guaranteed by insurance plans, but offered no opt-out clause for religious groups who opposed contraception:

SEC. 714. STANDARDS RELATING TO BENEFITS FOR CONTRACEPTIVES.

`(a) REQUIREMENTS FOR COVERAGE- A group health plan, and a health insurance issuer providing health insurance coverage in connection with a group health plan, may not–

`(1) exclude or restrict benefits for prescription contraceptive drugs or devices approved by the Food and Drug Administration, or generic equivalents approved as substitutable by the Food and Drug Administration, if such plan provides benefits for other outpatient prescription drugs or devices; or

`(2) exclude or restrict benefits for outpatient contraceptive services if such plan provides benefits.

“Women shouldn’t be held hostage by virtue of where they live,” Snowe told a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing in September of 2001. “It simply is not fair.” “All we’re saying in this legislation is that if health insurance plans provide coverage for prescription drugs that that coverage has to extend to FDA-approved prescription contraceptives. It’s that simple.”

At the time, religious groups also raised concerns about the measure and Snowe promised to add a “conscience clause” that is similar to the exemption included in Maine’s law. Incidentally, that language is very similar to the conscience protections included in Obama’s regulation.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), who is up for re-election in 2012, did not endorse a Republican proposal to increase the Medicare eligibility age and block grant the Medicaid program, Politico’s Matt DoBias notices. “Snowe was one of two GOP committee members who didn’t sign onto the Finance Committee Republican recommendations to the deficit supercommittee. The other was Jon Kyl of Arizona, and his absence was less notable because he’s a member of the debt panel”:

It was Snowe’s concerns over the potential for block grants, stricter Medicare enrollment requirements and possibility for cuts to Social Security benefits — and not the threat of repealing the reform law — that precluded her from signing onto the committee’s proposals.

“I spent a great deal of time reviewing the proposals and agree with many of them,” Snowe said in a written statement supplied by her office.

There were other areas of disagreement, too. Snowe wanted to require pharmaceutical companies to discount drugs used by some of Medicare’s costliest patients. Her Republican colleagues have been cool to idea.

Some of the committee’s health savings proposals are far from controversial and have been included in President Obama’s deficit reduction plan and the fiscal commission’s report. But the Medicare eligibility and Medicaid block grant restructuring are big stumbling blocks for election wary politicians because they are unpopular and face political opposition from within the Republican party. As Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) recently explained at the unveiling of the Republican Governors Association’s health policy report, “not all Republican governors may want a block grant. … It’s up to the states to decide.” Governors fear that converting the existing matching rate formula into a block grant would provide states with less money that they would have otherwise received and force local governments to cut eligibility to the program.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted over the summer also found that 72 percent of Americans oppose cutting Medicaid spending — including 59 percent of self-identified Republicans — and 54 percent are against raising the Medicare eligibility age.

Politico’s Pulse reports that Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) “is inviting people to send a ‘thank you’ note to the 11th Circuit Court of appeals for deeming the individual mandate unconstitutional. “I applaud you and your efforts for standing up for the constitution and for defending my individual liberties,’ reads the note on her reelection website, conveniently omitting the fact the Snowe was the only Republican to vote in favor of the mandate when she supported moving the health reform legislation out of the Senate Finance Committee:

In fact, she did not publicly oppose the individual requirement to purchase coverage — which the 11th Circuit found unconstitutional — until October of 2009. Earlier that year, she had indicated that she could support an individual requirement if coverage became more affordable. “I understand the rationality behind the individual mandate,” Snowe said during the committee’s mark-up hearings. “Certainly we shouldn’t pay for those who don’t have health insurance.”

But this isn’t the first time Snowe has attempted to cloud her role in moving forward the health care legislation. In March, Snowe issued a press release announcing that she is co-sponsoring an amendment “to repeal the employer mandate imposed by the new health reform law.” The “mandate” she was referring to, however, is actually a “free rider” compromise provision that she helped broker in her effort to draft a bipartisan health care law.