Obama vs. Romney 101: 5 differences on women's issues

President Obama won the women’s vote four years ago, and he’ll need to again to win reelection, given Mitt Romney’s strength among male voters. The Obama campaign has long argued that Mr. Romney is waging a “war on women.” Team Romney says it’s Mr. Obama who is waging war on women, with policies that have harmed the economic recovery – which harms women.

Here are some of the women’s issues on which the candidates differ.

1. Health care

Charles Dharapak/AP/File
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks about the Supreme Court ruling on health care in Washington on June 28.

When fully implemented in 2014, Mr. Obama's health-care law will add millions of women to the insurance rolls. If Romney succeeds in repealing the law, that will eliminate the subsidies and guarantees of coverage that benefit women. It will also end the requirement that insurers cover preventive services such as mammograms, prenatal care, and certain cancer screenings with no co-pays.

Starting in August 2012, insurers must also cover well-woman visits, domestic-violence screening, and breast-feeding supplies at no additional charge.  Insurance plans must also cover birth control, though religious institutions are exempted (see next item).

Romney’s fix for health care is to repeal the law, and allow innovation at the state level that promotes competition among insurers and makes coverage more affordable. His campaign website does not address women’s health issues in particular, but the campaign says women would certainly benefit from the flexibility Romney would grant states.

States can help uninsured women through public-private partnerships and subsidies, and they can help chronically ill women gain access to high-risk pools and reinsurance. Romney also says he would “unshackle” health-savings accounts by allowing funds to be used for insurance premiums.

1 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.