All but declared dead three months ago, a sharply contested measure that would require health insurance companies to cover contraception has suddenly resurfaced.

However, the majority of employer plans already cover contraception.

Ms. Erickson, a pharmacy manager, said she paid about $300 a year for birth-control pills; her husband's health insurance policy, like her own, does not cover contraception.

Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, an abortion rights Republican who has sponsored legislation that would require insurance companies to cover contraception, has seen a major change.

I contrast this with the insurers' reluctance to cover female infertility treatments and, more important, with their almost universal refusal to cover female contraception.

Americans, polls have shown, tend to favor requiring insurance companies to cover contraception.

In March 2013, Eden Foods filed suit against the Obama administration for exemption from the mandate to cover contraception for its employees under the Affordable Care Act.

Several dozen lawsuits have been filed challenging the Department of Health and Human Services' decision to mandate that health plans cover female contraception.

"It's already scandalous that insurance companies don't cover birth control, contraception and even abortion," she said, the color rising in her cheeks.

Limbaugh said that requiring insurance companies to cover contraception is "no different than if somebody knocked on my door that I don't know and said, 'You know what?