Obama's contraception compromise falls flat with bishops, GOP

c. 2012 USA Today
WASHINGTON (RNS) President Obama's effort to accommodate the Catholic
Church by altering his administration's rule on birth control coverage has not
appeased the church, congressional Republicans or GOP candidates trying to
take his job next year.

Their continued anger over a requirement that nearly all employers offer
free insurance coverage for contraception -- even with changes Obama
announced Friday (Feb. 10) for faith-based institutions that object on religious
grounds -- guarantees that the issue will percolate throughout the
presidential election season.

Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops, summed it up this way: "It's the unstoppable force meets the
immovable object."

While challenges to the rule could take the form of legal and legislative
assaults, the White House and the Obama re-election campaign are
comfortable with the revised rule, believing most Americans -- and particularly most
women -- are on their side.

White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew insisted Sunday on NBC's "Meet the
Press" that "the right of women to all forms of preventative health care" was
an unshakeable part of Obama's health care overhaul. He noted groups such
as the Catholic Health Association supported the revised mandate, which lets
certain religious employers avoid providing or paying for contraception
directly.

That's not enough to appease the opposition:

-- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced it would pursue,
"with no less vigor, no less sense of urgency," a demand that the
administration rescind the mandate for everyone "to protect religious liberty and
freedom of conscience for all."

-- Republican leaders in Congress stuck by their plans to overturn the
requirement with legislation. The issue "will not go away until the
administration backs down," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on
CBS' "Face the Nation."

-- Three of Obama's potential opponents in November -- Mitt Romney, Rick
Santorum and Newt Gingrich -- thundered against funding birth control under
Medicaid or through employer subsidies, calling it a radical overreach by
government.

Romney, who failed to change a similar law when he was governor of
Massachusetts, now says he would cut off taxpayer funding for contraception at
community health centers and Planned Parenthood. Santorum called it an issue
of "religious freedom -- it is the government controlling your life." And
Gingrich said Obama is threatening to "declare war" on the Catholic Church.
The original rule exempted only churches, synagogues or mosques, not
faith-based hospitals, schools and charities or private employers with
conscience objections to contraception. On Friday, Obama said faith-based employers
could defer to their insurance companies, but individual private employers
remain under the mandate.

A Fox News poll of 1,100 registered voters, conducted Feb. 6-9 before
Obama's Friday announcement, found 61 percent of Americans say employer health
plans should be required to cover birth control for women, while 34 percent
disagreed. Among women, two-thirds approved of the requirement.

Robert Boston, senior policy analyst for Americans United for Separation
of Church and State, says: "If the state can demonstrate that access for all
women to preventive health care is a compelling interest, it can trump
religious freedom. The bishops are asking for a very broad exception -- the
right of private employers, not just institutions, to personally cut off
access to any employee. That's a definition of religious freedom way beyond
what any court has defined as religious freedom. It allows your boss to impose
his religion on you."

Catholic University Law professor Robert Destro argued that the Supreme
Court decision in Citizens United recognizes that corporations -- including
faith-based nonprofits and for-profit companies run by individuals of faith
-- are covered under the rights of free religious and political speech.
Obama's mandate, in any form, is "a shell game" because it still links
believers who find contraception immoral to insurers who will provide it free,
even without direct participation from the religious person or
institution, Destro said.

The mandate has touched off a predictable political firestorm.

"This thing has exploded like a Hiroshima mushroom cloud," Republican
strategist Ralph Reed, chairman of the conservative Faith and Freedom
Coalition, said Friday on CNN. When the conversation turned to public opinion polls, he said, "You don't
take a poll on religious liberty."

It's a mixed bag for Obama. His support among women is stronger than among
men -- 48 percent of women approved of the job he's doing in the most
recent Gallup Poll, compared to 44 percent of men. Some women's groups faulted
him for negotiating with Catholic bishops over the issue and have
criticized him in the past for other decisions, such as blocking over-the-counter
sales of the "morning after" birth control pill to girls under 17.

Republicans say they have Obama on the defensive because of his perceived
overreach into church affairs. The National Republican Congressional
Committee is using his effort in a fundraising appeal: "In a country founded on
religious liberty, Democrats have now done the unthinkable," NRCC Executive
Director Guy Harrison wrote. "Democrats have inserted themselves into your
health care, and now they want to insert their values into your religion."

"We all know how hard the right wing will fight to restrict women's rights
-- it appears to be their No. 1 goal!" countered Sen. Patty Murray of
Washington, chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "The
very ability of women to participate equally in our society is at stake on
Election Day."