(As Prepared for Delivery)

M. President, I'd like to talk for a minute about religious freedom. Our country was founded on the belief that all Americans should have the right to practice their religious beliefs, as long as their faith does not infringe on the rights of another person. And this concept-that I have the freedom to stretch out my arm, but only until it reaches your face-is an idea that is woven through our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. I have the right to choose my profession, and my house, and my doctor according to my own faith, but I don't have the right to choose yours.

When we wrote the health reform law, we made sure to account for this balance. The health reform law required insurance companies to cover preventive health benefits without co-pays, and we asked the Institute of Medicine to study which preventive health benefits should be included. And last summer, the IOM recommended to the Department of Health and Human Services that contraceptives should be covered, along with cancer screening, screening for domestic violence, and many other services that have been shown to improve women's health.

A number of religious institutions objected to being required to cover contraceptive services as a preventive health benefit for their employees. President Obama heeded their concerns, and he created an exception for churches and other religious institutions. And a couple of weeks ago the president went even further, by saying that religiously-affiliated organizations won't have to pay for contraceptive coverage for their employees.
Let me say that again: a religiously affiliated, non-profit employer will not have to pay for contraceptives for their employees.

I believe that all Americans should be able to freely and fully practice their religious beliefs to the extent that their practice does not infringe on the freedom of others. I believe that this freedom is at the heart of our society, and I applaud the President for finding a solution that protects religious freedoms while also providing health care to nearly all women.

However, my friend Senator Blunt, with whom I'm actually working on a separate transportation amendment, has filed an off-topic amendment that goes much further than the President's accommodation of religious employers. His amendment says that any employer or health insurer could opt out of providing any essential benefit or preventive service required by the Affordable Care Act. All they have to do is say their objection is on religious or moral grounds.
 
This amendment would upend how our entire health insurance system works. It would allow any employer to opt out of covering any health care service guaranteed to Americans by the Affordable Care Act. This is an unprecedented proposal, and one that could change the structure of health care in our country for the worse.

The President found a balanced proposal that maintains women's access to health care while allowing religiously affiliated organizations to opt-out of paying for it. On the other hand, Senator Blunt's amendment would allow employers to prohibit health plans from providing the essential health services guaranteed by the Affordable Care Act.

 For example, under this amendment, an employer could object to covering vaccines for children, and thus the plan would not be required to cover them. Or an employer could choose not to allow an insurer to cover maternity care for a single woman, and the woman would have to pay for her prenatal and maternity care out of pocket.

And, of course, Senator Blunt's amendment ignores the religious freedom of women to be able to access contraceptives. The President's accommodation protected the religious freedom of religious organizations while also protecting the religious freedom of women who are their employees. The Blunt amendment violates the freedom of a woman to receive the kind of scientifically-proven health care she chooses.

 M. President, this proposal doesn't simply put women's access to birth control in the hands of their employers. It doesn't simply allow politics to get between women and their doctors. It changes the way that health care is provided in our country. And it violates a core belief in our society, that our religious decisions are our own, and that each of us-every woman and man in our society-has the right to make decisions about our own health for ourselves and our families.

Over the last decade, we have seen proposal after proposal that would politicize the decisions that women make with their doctors. Now we're seeing an all-out attack on a woman's right to protect her health by using contraceptives-this is something that almost all women in this country use at some point in their lives. This seems to be a clear case of one person's religious beliefs impinging on the rights of others. It's a deeply worrying case of one person's hand meeting another's face.
M. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to fight back against these assaults. I urge my friends on both sides of the aisle to respect the decisions that all women make about their health care, and to oppose Senator Blunt's amendment to undermine this basic freedom.

Thank you, and I yield the floor.