In a belated attempt at damage control, President Barack Obama reversed course on the controversial HHS mandate requiring faith-based institutions to provide their employees with health policies covering birth control, the morning-after pill, and sterilizations. But whether he can stanch the political blood-letting over the issue remains to be seen.
Obama shifted the mandated responsibility for paying for reproductive procedures, which the Catholic Church has long found morally objectionable, from religious institutions on to the health insurance companies.
But it remains an open question whether the compromise will be acceptable to either the Catholic church or the insurance industry, even as the controversy has reinvigorated the social-conservative movement.
Under the scheme, religious organizations will not be responsible for providing birth control, however women employed by organizations such as Catholic hospitals, schools or universities will still be able to get contraceptives from their insurance companies.
A senior Obama adviser told Fox News the move was an “accommodation,” rather than a “compromise.”
“Religious liberty will be protected and a law that requires full preventive care will not discriminate against women,” Obama said in announcing the plan from the White House.
“Religious institutions will not have to pay for or provide contraceptive services, but women who work there will have access to free contraceptive services and won’t have to pay hundreds of dollars a year which can go toward paying the rent or buying groceries.”
Immediately after Obama’s announcement, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Fox News, “We will be looking at this carefully, making sure that women have the benefits that they need to keep themselves healthy, to keep their families healthy while we respect the religious objections of a group of employers.”
News of the about-face was greeted with caution by Catholic leaders. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Archbishop of Washington told MSNBC’s Morning Joe, “Our concern is our basic freedom, and I'm not sure it makes sense to say 'how about if we compromise away parts of your freedom, how about if this part's acceptable to us and this part isn't?”
Asked if the Hawaii compromise would be acceptable, Wuerl expressed deep skepticism. “The concept that, at least as I understand the so-called Hawaii compromise is: ‘You don’t have to do this, you just have to refer people to them.’ That seems to me like saying in our schools: ‘We’re not going to have pornographic web sites in our classrooms, but we will have to have referrals to where the kids can go to find those websites.’
“I don’t think it makes sense. We have to keep going back to what’s really the issue here: freedom. The freedom of faith-based entities.”
Wuerl added he would need to review the president’s proposal before passing judgment, however.
Republicans were even less convinced the announcement would fix the impasse, which conservatives say is really about Obamacare’s infringement on the Bill of Rights.
Georgia Rep. Tom Price told Newsmax, “I don’t think it’s a compromise at all, and if it is a compromise, it’s just rhetorical.
“This isn’t about abortion. This isn’t about birth control,” he said. “This is about who are we, as a society, going to allow to define what healthcare and health coverage is. As a physician, I can tell you that the last thing that patients in this country want is the federal government stepping in and deciding what kind of health coverage and healthcare you and your family should have.”
The plan will be loosely based on the one used in Hawaii, where employers are responsible for referring their workers to places where they can obtain contraceptives, something which Catholic leader have called “cooperating with evil.” However the Obamacare plan makes insurance companies responsible for the services, without involving the employer.
Two prominent Catholics, departing White House Chief of staff Bill Daley and vice president Joe Biden had been the driving forces behind the climb-down which has angered many others in the administration, Politico reports.
And it became clear that newly appointed Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, played a major part in forcing the president’s hand.
According to Politico, Daley, Biden and Dolan met Obama in November to discuss the mandate that would have forced nearly all employers to include free contraceptive coverage in their workers’ health insurance plans. Workers directly employed by religions, such as clergy, would not have to be covered but staff at hospitals and educational institutions would.
Obama felt “mildly uncomfortable” about being put on the spot in the meeting, according to an unidentified source quoted by the website.
The president left the meeting without making a commitment, but Dolan cleverly boxed him in by quietly telling people that the president was sympathetic to the idea of compromise. That allowed Republican leaders such as House Speaker John Boehner and presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich to paint last month’s announcement by Sebelius as an assault on religious freedom.
Biden also contacted several Catholic bishops including Bishop William Lori, the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, Politico said.
“I know it was taken by the conference as an opportunity at the highest level of the government to explain our concerns as reasonably and carefully as we could,” Lori told Politico. He said Dolan was optimistic after the meeting, “but all of us understood that the proof would be in the pudding.”
Catholic leaders led by Dolan, who is due to be elevated to cardinal on Feb. 18, took every opportunity to push their case, with the archbishop writing hard-hitting op-ed pieces in both the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.
Then this past weekend, archbishops around the country gave priests letters to read to their congregations from the pulpits which had a simple message: “We cannot – we will not – comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens.”
According to ABC News, the controversy over the contraceptive mandate has opened a gaping chasm among Obama’s top lieutenants. Biden – the country’s first Catholic vice-president – Daley and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had all cautioned that it would cause huge political fallout.
Five moderate Democrat Senators, led by Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, also joined in the process. Manchin teamed up with conservative Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida to author legislation to overturn the mandate.
On the other side, Sebelius – herself a Catholic – is said to be angered by the decision as are senior advisers Valerie Jarrett and David Plouffe, who, according to Politico, had told the president that as surveys consistently showed that the vast majority of Catholic women used contraceptives at some point in their life, he would not face a major revolt among the faithful at the ballot box.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.