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In a recent survey of 40 countries, Pew found that only seven percent of Americans are morally opposed to contraceptives. Over half of respondents said using contraceptives is morally acceptable. 

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While not surprising, this level of support is still gravely concerning, especially since the survey also found that 36 percent of Americans don't even consider contraception to be a moral issue. 

Over at the Washington Post Wonk Blog, Christopher Ingraham took advantage of the survey results to make a plug for — you guessed it — the Obama administration's contraception/abortifacient/sterilization mandate (emphasis added):

Contraception is one area where Democrats and Republicans are in agreement with each other, and with most of the rest of the world. Fewer than 10 percent of Democrats and Republicans say contraception is morally unacceptable — kind of makes you wonder what all the hoopla over the Obamacare contraception mandate is about, doesn't it? Sub-Saharan Africa stands out as the region with the highest opposition to contraception, at 37 percent opposed.

There are, of course, many reasons to oppose the mandate. However, a supposed “wonk” like Ingraham should know the difference between personal preference and support for policy. Furthermore, part of the “hoopla” has nothing to do with contraception, and everything to do with the abortion aspects of the mandate — and, according to Pew, 49 percent of Americans found abortion to be “morally unacceptable.”

Consider the difference between personal preferences on something like smoking. Virginia banned most smoking in bars and restaurants, something that my lungs found preferable. On a personal level, I enjoy the ability to go to all restaurants without finding my lungs assailed by cigarette smoke.

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On a policy level, however, mandating such a ban means the government is denying restaurant owners freedom. Similarly, the American people may believe using contraceptives is moral — but that doesn't mean they want the government to violate religious liberty by mandating coverage.

Furthermore, some restaurants used to allow smoking, and some did not. I had the freedom to patronize their services, or not. Contraception was widely available for low prices before the mandate — and so was abstinence. So the mandate didn't solve a problem of scarcity of availability, or a problem of finding cost-effective methods of preventing pregnancy. 

Perhaps more importantly, Ingraham's point ignores what the “hoopla” was about at the Supreme Court earlier this month: not contraception, but abortion, which is the concern both Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood expressed in their respective lawsuits against the mandate, and at the Supreme Court.

Which points to a bit of sleight-of-hand by Ingraham: By identifying the mandate as “the Obamacare contraception mandate,” he misleads his readers into thinking of the mandate as only requiring the coverage of contraception, not abortifacients and sterilization.

Five years ago, the Washington Post Wonk Blog was a respectable, intellectual, center-left online location for policy and politics analysis, as well as interesting nuggets of information.

Since that time, the site has deteriorated into a traditionally liberal website that prioritizes Democratic Party talking points over real analysis. This post by Christopher Ingraham is indicative of how far the site has fallen.