If the government is willing to pay, isn't that enough?
For the Little Sisters, it’s not a financial question but a moral one about what their plan includes.
This isn’t a strange concept for Americans.
Many schools have decided not to offer soda and remove soda machines from their halls because they don’t think soda is good for their kids. The question isn’t whether the soda companies offer to pay for the vending machines and the school’s decision doesn’t prevent children from getting soda elsewhere. But the schools don’t want to provide or support something they believe is bad for their kids.
That’s all the Little Sisters are asking for.
They are not fighting to make contraception illegal or block access. And there is a simple and better alternative to forcing the Little Sisters of the Poor to offer these services. If the government offered them through the ACA healthcare exchange, that would both protect the religious freedoms of the Little Sisters and better meet the government’s goal of providing contraception coverage to women--because the exchanges could provide it, not just to the few women in religiously protected plans, but to the third of American women not even covered by the mandate HHS is fighting so hard to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to follow.