Please help me understand the co-called controversy around the birth control compromise

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3. The nontroversy has been re-framed as a religious freedom issue

Nobody anywhere is forcing anyone anywhere to take birth control pills, hysterical ranting from the usual suspects notwithstanding. The nontroversy is over paying for insurance coverage that includes birth control for women employees. Whether a woman has a prescription for birth control or not, she gets that coverage benefit. She also gets coverage for prostate exams, but nobody seems to be advocating for the surgical implantation of prostate glands in women, so that doesn't seem to have made any difference to anyone. Yet.

The curious thing is that insurance coverage that includes birth control is cheaper than a plan that doesn't include birth control. Women who have access to the full coverage of all their medical needs tend to cost less than women who don't. The next phase of this nontroversy will be over the higher cost to cover women for insurance that doesn't cover birth control, just you wait and see.

This is stove-piping of the worst sort, and the popular media have collectively decided to just throw up their hands and report on the issue in a way that is at odds with reality, but pleasing to a certain reactionary segment of the population. Why would they do this? Nobody can say.