“We are Catholics”: group launches national ad campaign against HHS mandate

From The Hill:

An association of lay Catholics will air a nationwide ad against the Obama administration’s birth control coverage mandate on Fox News Thursday.

The move serves to highlight a two-week effort by U.S. Catholic bishops to build momentum against the mandate, which some have argued violates religious freedom.

The debate puts the church in a tough spot because polls show that the vast majority of Catholic women use and support birth control.

“We are Catholics. Together, we are the church. … We will defend our right to practice our faith free from government coercion,” the Catholic Association ad’s narrator says over a photo of President Obama.

The group also announced a new poll finding that a majority of voters “oppose the notion that free birth control should be a federal priority.”

Catholics for Choice, meanwhile, said Tuesday that more than 3,600 people have submitted comments to the Department of Health and Human Services in support of the mandate.

The group has also dismissed the bishops’ two-week activism push, saying that warm-up events were poorly attended “even by the low standards that the bishops set themselves.”

Read more. And see the ad for yourself below.