Veto Override Deepens the Divide Over Contraception Coverage

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Both sides vow to carry on the fight over contraceptive coverage in health care plans.

On Wednesday, Missouri lawmakers overturned Governor Nixon's veto of a bill that would exempt employers from providing coverage for religious or moral reasons. Now it looks like the issue may wind up in court.

One side says this debate is a matter of religious freedom and moral choice; the other side says the religious issue is a diversion and women are going to pay the price.

For Paula Gianino, President & CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, the override of the veto of Senate Bill 749 is a step back for Missouri families.

"This went way beyond birth control bills," she says. "It also went to very expensive procedures like vasectomies and tubal ligations."

Gianino says the religious debate over the bill was a diversion from the real issue: affordable access to birth control.

"So this was never a debate about religious liberty and many made it that falsely. It was never a debate about abortion, because we already have a law in Missouri that does not allow commercial insurance plans to cover abortion services."

Gianino says now Missouri women who work for employers who choose this exemption could pay nearly $600 a year for birth control.

"But, I also think it shines a very bad light on Missouri nationally because Missouri was the only state in the country to create and pass such a bill in 2012. A bill fighting about access to birth control."

Nick Lund-Molfese, the Catholic Diocese of Springfield Cape Girardeau, sees SB 749 as a protection.

"We see it protecting business owners and individuals from being forced by the government to violate their faith or beliefs."

He says business owners in this Diocese felt forced to choose between their faith and their healthcare obligation.

"If you ask people to choose between violating their faith and doing something they'd like to do, I think the values of Missouri are not to put people in that situation. Missouri is a state that respects individual conscience and we don't want to ask people to have to choose."

Some in Missouri say this is a rebuke to President Obama's Affordable Healthcare Act, which mandated the coverage. Others, including Gianino, say this sheds Missouri in a bad light because we we're the only state in the nation to vote in such a measure.