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FILE - In this Oct. 31, 2011 file photo, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen …

The Obama the government's decision requiring church-affiliated employers to safeguard birth control was bound to originate an uproar among Roman Catholics and members of other faiths, in ~ degree matter their beliefs on contraception.

The law, finalized a week ago, raises a webwork and sensitive legal question: Which institutions modify as religious and can be liberated from the mandate?

For a body of christians, mosque or synagogue, the answer is chiefly straightforward. But for the massive reticulated of religious-run social service agencies there is no simple solution. Federal code lays out several criteria for the form of sovereignty to determine which are religious. But in the condition of the contraception mandate, critics affirm Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius chose the narrowest ones. Religious groups that oppose the precept say it forces people of creed to choose between upholding church opinion and serving the broader society.

"It's not with respect to preventing women from buying anything themselves, nevertheless telling the church what it has to corrupt, and the potential for that to action further," said Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, representing more 600 hospitals.

Keehan's support as far as concerns the passage of the Obama hale condition care overhaul was critical in the visage of intense opposition by the U.S. bishops. She now says the narrowness of the pious exemption in the birth control edict "has jolted us." She pledged to appliance a one-year grace period the conduct has provided to "pursue a modification."

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department adopted the domination to improve health care for women. Last year, one advisory panel from the Institute of Medicine, that advises the federal government, recommended including origin control on the list of covered services, partly because it promotes maternal and child health by allowing women to space their pregnancies. The adjustment includes a religious exemption if ~y organization qualifies. Under that provision, an employer generally will be considered godly if its main purpose is spreading rigid beliefs, and if it largely employs and serves family of the same faith. That expedient a Catholic parish likely would assuage for a religious exemption; a of great size church-run soup kitchen probably would not.

Employers that disappoint to provide health insurance coverage subordinate to the federal law could be fined $2,000 for employee per year. The bishops' pertaining to home anti-poverty agency, Catholic Charities, says it employs 70,000 the masses nationwide. The fine for the University of Notre Dame, the greatest part prominent Catholic school in the nation, could be in the millions of dollars.

HHS says employers have power to appeal a decision on whether they qualify for an exemption. But Hannah Smith, elder counsel for the Becket Fund as antidote to Religious Liberty, said, "The mandate vests overmuch much unbridled discretion in the hands of administration bureaucrats."

Mandates for birth-control coverage are not entirely strange for religious groups. Twenty-eight states even now require contraceptive coverage in prescription remedy plans. Of those states, 17 pr~ a range of religious exemptions, at the same time that two others provide opt-outs of other kinds. However, opponents of the HHS precept say there is no state precept as broad as the new founded on rule combined with a religious privilege that is so narrow.

Even in states to which place the requirement already exists, the egress is far from settled.

Wisconsin's 2009 contraception edict did not include a religious privilege, but allowed an exception for employers who self-make secure. While some dioceses in the represent fully were able to self-insure, others couldn't offer to do so. The Diocese of Madison, Wis., ended up offering a policy with birth-control coverage, otherwise than that asked employees to follow church education and not use the benefit. Local bishops continued to lobby public lawmakers for an exemption. But leaders knew a public health care overhaul was in disclosure and hoped the federal law would exist an improvement, said John Huebscher, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, the general policy arm of the state's bishops.

In California, whose pious exemption served as the model instead of the Obama administration, dioceses and some church-run agencies were able to self-make sure, said Carol Hogan of the California Catholic Conference, limit that option is for the ~ numerous part unavailable under the federal freedom from disease care law. Church-run groups could possess stopped offering insurance to their employees, on the contrary considered that option unfair to workers.

The bishops bear responded sharply to the regulation, launching a nationwide campaign adverse to the mandate.

Bishops in more than 140 dioceses issued statements that were decipher at Mass last weekend. Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., called the claim "a radical incursion on the lot of our government into freedom of conscience." Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh wrote that "the Obama management was essentially saying 'to hell by you,' particularly to the Catholic common by dismissing our beliefs, our conscientious freedom and our freedom of conscience."

The Becket Fund had previously filed brace federal lawsuits over the regulations in successi~ behalf of Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic catholic arts school near Charlotte, N.C., and Colorado Christian University, ~y evangelical school near Denver. Both defiance the mandate as a violation of individual freedoms, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, what one. says the government cannot impose a substantial burden on the free exercise of sentiment of faith. The fine for Belmont Abbey would exist more than $300,000 for the primitive year, and more than $500,000 in opposition to Colorado Christian, Smith, the Becket Fund instruction, said.

Many conservatives are also supporting legislation ~ dint of. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., that would digest a series of exceptions to the just discovered health care law on religious and the still small voice grounds

For religious-affiliated employers, the order will take effect Aug. 1, 2013, and their workers in chiefly cases will have access to coverage starting Jan. 1, 2014. Women in operation for secular enterprises, from profit-composition companies to government, will have fit to the new coverage starting Jan. 1, 2013, in in the greatest degree cases.

Workplace health plans will be favored with to cover all forms of contraception approved through the Food and drug Administration, ranging from the pill to implantable devices to sterilization. Also covered is the dawn-after pill, which can prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex and is considered equivalent to an abortion drug by some religious conservatives.

There is no command to cover abortions. But that is small quantity comfort to Catholic leaders, since the regulation violates other church teachings.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that the giving will not reconsider the decision.

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Associated Press secretary Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington contributed to this reputation.

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