Earlier this year, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney came out strongly against the Obama administration policy that will require health insurance plans to offer birth control coverage at no additional cost — one of the many important preventive health benefits women will receive as a result of Obamacare.

In particular, Romney denounced the fact that insurance plans would now be required to cover Plan B, a form of emergency contraception that he falsely referred to on numerous occasions as “abortive pills.” This is what Romney said in Colorado on February 6, 2012:

ROMNEY: This same administration said that the churches and the institutions they run, such as schools and let’s say 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 in faiths that do not share those views. This is a violation of conscience.

(Plan B works just like regular birth control pills and is not, in fact, an abortifacient.)

The Miami Herald’s Marc Caputo reports that next week the Romney campaign will be doing a major fundraising blitz across Florida, including an event “at the Star Island manse of pharmaceutical magnate Phil and Pat Frost where dinner costs $50,000.”

Who is Dr. Phil Frost? He is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Teva Pharmaceuticals, a major manufacturer of contraceptives. Its North American website prominently advertises several forms of contraception, including Plan B One Step, which Romney previously denounced as an “abortive pill”:

This isn’t Romney’s first instance of hypocrisy on this issue.  Earlier this year, ThinkProgress revealed Romney’s hypocrisy, noting that he was financially invested in — and profiting from — the very products he was seeking to restrict affordable access to:

Romney’s Goldman Sachs 2002 Exchange Place Fund, valued at over a million dollars in 2010, brought in nearly $600,000 in gains in 2010 and is invested in:

- Watson Pharmaceuticals: manufacturer of nine forms of emergency contraception (which Romney incorrectly identifies as “abortifacients“).
- Johnson & Johnson: launched the first U.S. prescription birth control product in 1931 and produces various forms of birth control.
- Merck: produces various forms of birth control
- Mylan: produces birth control medication and filed the first application for a generic birth control pill last year.
- Pfizer: a contraception producer that recently had to recall about a million packs of birth-control pills that weren’t packaged correctly.

It appears that Mitt Romney strongly opposes emergency contraception, except when it’s of financial benefit to him or his campaign.

Newt Gingrich doubled down on his claims that the Obama administration is engaged in a “war against religion,” during a town hall in Florida this morning, and accused Mitt Romney of acting in the same “dictatorial” fashion while serving as governor of Massachusetts.

“The Obama administration is engaged in a war against religion,” Gingrich began. “Their decision last week that they would impose on every Catholic institution, every Jewish institution, every Protestant institution the Obamacare standard of what you have to buy as insurance is a direct violation of freedom of religion, an example of the dictatorial attitude of this administration,” he charged, ignoring the regulation’s religious exemption. He then went after Romney:

GINGRICH: Let me just note that in a similar circumstance, Governor Romney imposed activities on the Catholic hospitals against their opposition. Refused to allow them the right of conscience in Romneycare. Just as, by the way, he eliminated serving Kosher food to elderly Jewish residents under Medicaid.

Watch it:

In reality, Romney’s position on allowing religious institutions like Catholic hospitals to opt out of providing emergency contraception to rape victims is more complicated. In 2005, the governor vetoed a “widely supported bill” making the morning-after pill available over the counter and requiring hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims, even after pledging to support such measures while running for governor. By September, the state legislature “easily overrode” his veto, but the Department of Public Health, which is overseen by Romney, began drafting regulations that exempted religious hospitals from the requirement.

Then suddenly, in December 2005, Romney “abruptly ordered his administration to reverse course… and require Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception medication to rape victims.” “My personal view in my heart of hearts is that people who are subject to rape should have the option of having emergency contraceptives or emergency contraceptive information,” he told the Boston Herald. Romney has since said that he would support broader federal conscience protections for health care workers and pledged to eliminate the Title X program which provides “reproductive health services like birth control” to millions of women.

Romney also angered the Jewish community in 2003 after he “nixed the funding of about $5 per day” that allocated additional dollars for “poor Jewish nursing-home residents to get kosher meals.” The governor warned that the subsidy would lead to an “increased rate for nursing facilities,” but the Massachusetts Legislature “approved an amendment to restore the $600,000 to finance the kosher meals.”

A Texas man has enlisted the ACLU to help him sue CVS for gender discrimination after a pharmacist refused to sell him emergency contraception.

Jason Melbourne had already visited four pharmacies in search of Plan B for his wife when he was referred to a CVS in Mesquite, Texas, some 15 miles away from his home. They had one box left:

But when he finally got there, the overnight pharmacist, Minni Matthew, told Melbourne she wasn’t going to sell it to him.

In order for him to buy the meds, the pharmacist said, she’d need to talk to and see the ID of his wife, who was at home with their two young children. He asked why, and she pointed to the fine print on the medication’s box, which says it can only be sold to someone age 17 or older. Melbourne pointed out that he was well over 17.

“I’ve bought this plenty of times in my life, and it’s never been a problem,” he said. “Are you telling me every other place I’ve bought it from has been wrong?”

Didn’t matter, Matthew said, since the medicine obviously wasn’t for him.

“Why don’t you show me the law that says you can’t sell this to a man?” Melbourne replied.

The situation got worse from there. Melbourne put his wife on the phone and even Googled the medication to show the pharmacist there was no law against selling it to a man. But “she didn’t want to see it,” he said.

That’s when a male pharmacy technician informed Melbourne that they didn’t want to sell emergency contraception to men because they might be giving it to “rape victims.”

Jezebel notes that Melbourne’s ordeal happened around the same time that a Houston CVS store refused to sell another man Plan B. CVS apologized for that last month, calling it an “isolated incident.” It wasn’t.

In fact, in 2010 ACLU received reports that Walgreens stores in Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma were refusing to sell emergency contraception to men. Walgreens relented when the ACLU confronted them publicly.

In an email about the Houston incident, CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis insisted they’d briefed all their stores on official company policy, which is “to follow FDA regulations for the sale of emergency contraception, which allows this product to be sold without a prescription to customers who are at least 17 years old, regardless of gender.”

But they obviously need to do a better job educating their stores, because the manager of the Mesquite CVS insisted they’re not supposed to sell Plan B to men because they can’t verify that the woman who takes it will be over 17.

Lisa Graybill, the legal director of the Texas ACLU, says refusing to sell Plan B to men based on this baseless “sensational story” is “misguided.” “I’m not aware of a single case of a man reportedly buying it to push on his underage pedophile victim,” she says.

“I’m outraged,” Melbourne says of the situation. “I chased this thing all over town, then I get accused of using this for rape, even after they’ve talked to my wife on the phone. It makes me feel like a piece of crap.”