We the undersigned believe Senator Manchin's vote for the Blunt Amendment betrayed the women of West Virginia. This Amendment (a reaction against the birth control provision in the President's health care plan) targets women's access to birth-control by allowing employers to refuse “any health service, intervention method, or prescription” to which they say they “morally object.”
This is a political maneuver designed to restrict women's health care by putting employers in charge of their coverage. Given the number of West Virginia women who are struggling to support themselves and their children in a state with a poverty rate among the highest in the nation, Senator Manchin's vote is not just egregious but unconscionable.