Obama offers faith groups new birth control rule

The birth-control rule, first introduced a year ago, became an election issue, with some advocates for women praising the mandate as a victory but some religious leaders decrying it as an attack on faith groups.

The health care law requires most employers, including faith-affiliated hospitals and nonprofits, to provide preventive care at no charge to employees. Scientific advisers to the government recommended that artificial contraception, including sterilization, be included in a group of services for women. The goal, in part, is to help women space out pregnancies to promote health.

Under the original rule, only those religious groups that primarily employ and serve people of their own faith — such as churches — were exempt. But other religiously affiliated groups, such as church-affiliated universities, Catholic Charities and hospitals, were told they had to comply.

Catholic bishops, evangelicals and some religious leaders who have generally been supportive of Obama's policies lobbied fiercely for a broader exemption. The Catholic Church prohibits the use of artificial contraception. Evangelicals generally accept the use of birth control, but some object to specific methods such as the morning-after contraceptive pill, which they argue is tantamount to abortion, and is covered by the policy.

Obama had promised to change the birth control requirement so insurance companies — and not faith-affiliated employers — would pay for the coverage, but religious leaders said more changes were needed to make the plan work.

Since then, more than 40 lawsuits have been filed by religious nonprofits and secular for-profit businesses contending the mandate violates their religious beliefs. As expected, this latest regulation does not provide any accommodation for individual business owners who have religious objections to the rule.

Questions remain about how the services ultimately will be funded. The Health and Human Services Department has not tallied an overall cost for the plan, according to Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, an HHS deputy policy director.

However, in its new version of the rule, the department argues that the change won't impose new costs on insurers because it will save them money "from improvements in women's health and fewer child births."

The latest version of the mandate is now subject to a 60-day public comment period. The overall mandate is to take effect for religious nonprofits in August.

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Zoll reported from New York. Associated Press writer David Crary in New York contributed.