In spite of pundits who claim the HHS mandate debate will drive women voters in fear of losing their “rights” to President Barack Obama, new polls show the exact opposite is happening.

CNA/EWTN News is reporting that a New York Times/CBS News poll found that the president’s approval rating among women has plummeted by 12 percentage points since the HHS mandate controversy began. Women’s approval of the president dropped at three times the rate as men within the same time period.

Overall, the president’s job approval fell from 50 percent last month to an all-time low of just 41 percent today.

Attributing the fall in the polls to the contentious HHS mandate, Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Students for Life of America, says “It’s definitely something that young women are concerned about.”

Hawkins told CNA that beyond just contraception or abortion, the mandate touches on the issue of religious freedom, which is clear to any woman in the U.S. “whether she’s religious or not.”

“It goes too far,” she said, adding that women are beginning to ask fundamental questions about what the government would be able to regulate next if this mandate were to succeed.

The results of the new poll suggest that desperate efforts by feminists and liberal lawmakers to shift the narrative from one of religious freedom to the more politically expedient topic of women’s rights have failed.

In fact, the same poll found that 57 percent of the men and women surveyed said religiously-affiliated employers should be permitted to “opt out” of covering birth control and other services to which they have moral objections.

These new numbers are obviously worrisome to the president and explain why his campaign launched a major outreach to women voters with an appeal to the healthcare law. On March 12, his campaign sent a letter to one million women in key battleground states. There are three separate versions of the letter, one for mothers, grandmothers, and girlfriends. Two days later, he launched “Nurses for Obama” which seeks to unite all female medical professionals who support ObamaCare.

The president also designated this week as “Women’s Week of Action” where campaign headquarters will organize phone banks, campus activities, house parties and media events to rally women voters.

“We’ve seen this before,” writes Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America. “The president is just like that boy in high school that treats his girlfriend like dirt over and over again but has this incredible knack of turning on the charm just when she’s ready to dump him.”

Nance is warning women not to fall into the trap. ” Don’t be fooled by his seemingly sweet gestures. The president’s initiative to make you swoon is a disingenuous strategy to rewrite the history of the past four years.”

She adds: “Breaking up isn’t easy, but it’s time to face the facts.”

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