President Obama announced on Friday a new policy that will provide free contraceptive coverage to women who work at religious organizations, including colleges, but will not require their employers to pay for or provide referrals to that service. Instead, insurance companies will be required to provide the coverage free of charge.
The general requirement that employers must offer free access to preventive care, including contraception for female employees, is part of the Obama administration’s health-care overhaul. It exempts employers, like churches, whose main purpose is to inculcate religious values and that primarily employ and serve people who share those values. The exemption does not cover religious schools, colleges, and hospitals, and in January the administration announced that it would give those organizations an extra year to comply with the rule. A number of colleges have complained about or filed suit over the policy.
The new policy was designed to accommodate the strong objections of some religious leaders and organizations, predominantly those affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, which forbids the use of contraceptives. Some leaders of Catholic organizations, including Michael Galligan-Stierle, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, had called the requirement an impingement on religious freedom.
On Friday he spoke of the new policy in conciliatory terms. “I’m encouraged by the president’s recognition of the inalienable right of religious liberty,” Mr. Galligan-Stierle told The Chronicle in an interview after Mr. Obama’s announcement. Some details remained unclear, Mr. Galligan-Stierle said, including what the policy might mean for the health insurance colleges offer to students. But over all, he said, “I think we’re headed in a very good direction.”
In statements later Friday, however, other Catholic leaders drew a harder line, The Washington Post reported. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops rejected any compromise on the issue and said it would continue pushing for a complete end to the birth-control mandate. Jim Towey, president of Ave Maria University, a conservative Catholic institution in Florida, also rebuked the White House’s new policy.
“I still don’t think President Obama gets it,” the Post quoted Mr. Towey as saying. “This is a fig leaf of a political compromise that’s trying to have it both ways, to mollify women’s groups and so-called centrist Catholics. But I think, fundamentally, this is not the end of this debate. It’s just the beginning.”
