The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the Department of Health and Human Services is circulating the draft of a regulation that would allow health care professionals and institutions to refuse to provide women access to some of the most common forms of contraception, under the auspices that such contraception is a form of abortion. The purpose of the draft rule is to pre-empt state laws that have protected women's ability to get birth control at pharmacies where a particular pharmacist refuses to fill these prescriptions. Read more....

With over 90% of Catholics who have ever had sexual intercourse claiming to have used contraceptives at some point, the question has to be asked of Senator McCain, if he supports the latest draconian efforts by the Bush administration to push this country back to the stone age? Rather than try and help impoverished people and reduce the number of abortions in this country, will McCain continue this Bush policy as he has so many others? How will he explain this to Catholic voters that he desperately needs this fall for the election?