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Arch Bishop O'Conner angry at Obama 09092012 Home > Most Popular Print Email Font Resize 27 Comments Story Statsopinion Editorial: A compromise on contraception Obama did the right thing in revamping his health care reform law to assuage the Catholic Church. Posted: 02/11/2012 01:00:00 AM MST By The Denver Postdenverpost.com Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius listens at left as President Barack Obama announces the revamp of his contraception policy requiring religious institutions to fully pay for birth control. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Associated Press)You can call President Obama's very public retreat on contraception and religious rights a compromise or a surrender. But, however you frame it, the important thing is that the president ended up doing the right thing. The place where religious freedoms and reproductive rights meet is often a political and constitutional minefield. And Obama stepped right into the middle of it last summer in announcing rules that employer-provided health insurance plans must include free birth control. The plan, part of the health care reform law, exempted expressly religious institutions, such as churches, from rules that violate their religious beliefs. But it did not exempt religious institutions with a more secular calling, including Catholic hospitals, universities and charities. The original plan was loudly criticized - and from many sides. Progressive Catholics such as former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine split from the plan. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been a strong opponent. And most of the GOP presidential field have said that the president's plan was, in effect, a declaration of war on religion. Clearly, the Obama administration did not see the storm of disapproval coming, although the president had reportedly been warned by many Catholics in his administration, including Vice President Joe Biden. Searching for a compromise, Obama found one in his home state of Hawaii, where the rules on insurance and contraception offered a solution. Obama's new plan basically takes the church out of the equation. The church-related institutions no longer have to offer their employees insurance that includes contraception. And, in looking at the free speech issue, the churches do not have to inform employees of alternate means of acquiring free birth control. The burden will now basically fall on the insurance companies, who will not only have to inform these employees of their rights, but also provide free birth control as part of any preventative package. The logic for insurers, according to the Obama administration, is that the price of contraception is far cheaper for the insurance companies than the cost of covering pregnancy and childbirth. Women's groups also point out that contraception reduces unwanted pregnancies and, therefore, reduces the number of abortions. The initial reaction to the ruling seems to be positive. The Catholic Health Association, which had criticized Obama's plan, embraced the compromise. The bishops, who many expect to still oppose the plan, issued a statement calling it a "first step." This allows the church, and the Obama administration, a way out of a conflict that never needed to have happened. The church is not directly involved, and women's access to birth control has not been jeopardized. We believe the compromise, which should have been worked out in advance of the original ruling, is one that all sides should now be able to embrace. Read more: Editorial: A compromise on contraception - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_19939904?source=commented-#ixzz1m5eGrzYy Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse
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