Obama backs off birth control rules

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama, struggling with a political storm that threatened to build, announced a birth control compromise Friday that he said would both protect religious liberties and ensure that the nation’s women have access to free contraception.

After weeks of growing controversy, Obama backed off a recently announced requirement for religious-affiliated employers to provide free birth control coverage even if it runs counter to their beliefs. Instead, workers at such institutions will be able to get free contraception directly from health insurance companies.

“Religious liberty will be protected, and a law that requires free preventive care will not discriminate against women,” Obama said in an appearance in the White House briefing room.

“I understand some folks in Washington want to treat this as another political wedge issue, but it shouldn’t be. I certainly never saw it that way,” Obama said. “This is an issue where people of good will on both sides of the debate have been sorting through some very complicated questions.”

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, head of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, said the changes were a “first step in the right direction.” But he also said there were too few details to know whether they addressed the church’s objections.

The president’s abrupt shift was an attempt to satisfy both sides of the debate, and most urgently, to end a political nightmare for the White House.

Although the administration had given itself more than a year to work out the details of the new birth control requirement for religious employers, the president acknowledged that the situation had become untenable and demanded a swift solution.

Congressional Republicans as well as GOP presidential hopefuls were beating up on Obama relentlessly over the issue, and even Democrats and some liberal groups allied with the Roman Catholic church were defecting.

“After the many genuine concerns that have been raised over the last few weeks, as well as frankly the more cynical desire on the part of some to make this into a political football,” Obama said, “it became clear that spending months hammering out a solution was not going to be an option, that we needed to move this faster.” He said he directed the Department of Health and Human Services last week to speed up the process.

Women will still get guaranteed access to birth control without co-pays or premiums no matter where they work, a provision of Obama’s health care law that he insisted must remain. But religious universities and hospitals that see contraception as a violation of their faith can refuse to cover it, and insurance companies will then have to step in to do so.

The White House did get the backing of one important Catholic organization, as well as a prominent women’s group.

“The framework developed has responded to the issues we identified that needed to be fixed,” Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, a trade group representing Catholic hospitals that had fought against the birth control requirement, said in a statement.

Planned Parenthood also backed the revisions.

“We believe the compliance mechanism does not compromise a woman’s ability to access these critical birth control benefits,” Cecile Richards, the women’s group president, said.