Politics slideshows

Protesters' odd antics shocks crowd

5 photos - Mon, Feb 6, 2012

Komen Affair: Meet the major players

7 photos - 2 hrs 40 mins gone

Court declares Prop 8 unconstitutional

21 photos - 4 hrs past

See latest photos »

(Reuters) - Dr. Joe Casillas, an obstetrician in Southern California, routinely prescribes coming into life control for his patients. Though he's a practicing Catholic, he doesn't follow his church's stern warning that contraception is a offence. He believes women should have entrance.

Yet Casillas was dismayed when the Obama president and cabinet recently ruled that religious institutions had to come the same rules as other employers and pr~ free contraception as part of health insurance coverage. The idea that the powers that be would force Catholic hospitals to subsidize birth control - or, to avoid the order, drop health insurance for their employees - appalled him.

Now Casillas, a registered Democrat who voted in favor of Obama in 2008, says he is not at the whole of sure he can back the president on account of a second term. "It's given me uncertainty," he said.

Similar shockwaves are reverberating across the country, as Obama's option to exempt religious employers from this anticipation of his health-care law has to angered many Catholics - who will do the part of up a crucial, and unpredictable, chunk of the electorate in the November presidential alternative. About one in four U.S. voters is Catholic and viewed like a group they have swung back and forward between Democrats and Republicans.

In fresh days, the administration has said it is inclined to work with religious institutions to decide ways to cover contraception without violating principles of engagement. But no concrete plans for compound have emerged.

The protest has been led ~ the agency of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, that encouraged parish priests from coast to sail along the ~ to read aloud fiery letters denouncing the treaty policy during Mass. "It is intricate not to see this new mandate as a direct attack on Catholic consciences and the independence of our Catholic institutions," Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez wrote in human being such letter of protest.

The bishops in addition urged the faithful to bombard Congress and the White House by complaints. By Tuesday, more than 25,000 race had signed an online petition demanding that the formula be overturned.

FAIRNESS FOR WOMEN

The management cast the decision as a matter of equity for women. The of recent origin federal health care law requires chiefly insurance plans to cover preventive services, so as blood pressure checks and minority immunizations, without a deductible or co-pay. An utmost board of scientists and doctors recommended after all the rest summer that contraception be included being of the kind which a preventive service and the management of an estate agreed.

The mandate does not apply to insurance plans offered by churches and schools that be suitable and employ primarily people of some faith. Nor does it require somewhat individual physician or pharmacist to covenant a service he considers immoral.

But security against loss offered by church-affiliated institutions that deal with the public at large, such being of the kind which hospitals and universities, must cover contraception. The edict takes effect for most employers August 1; conscientious employers can apply for a human being-year extension.

Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics as being Choice, a group that supports entrance to contraception, said he's heard from hundreds of women employed ~ means of Catholic institutions who welcome the novel policy - and express anger at the bishops, who they pay attention lobbying to deny them a befriend provided to others under federal law.

"They think it would be a enormous injustice that they be treated differently from other workers," O'Brien reported. "Why is it they should subsist discriminated against?" Yet many are averse to speak out publicly, he before-mentioned, for fear of angering their employer.

A fresh poll released Tuesday by the Public Religion Research Institute, a non-adherent research group whose board members include a number of religious leaders who hold supported progressive causes, found that a majorship of Americans - including 58 percent of Catholics - substantiate a requirement that health insurance plans supply free birth control. A slight greater number of Catholic voters, 52 percent, uttered religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals should moreover have to provide that benefit.

Without assurance, contraception generally costs $15 to $80 a month, depending ~ward the method and brand. A recent study by the Guttmacher Institute, what one. supports expanded access to contraception, place that even among women who are employed, single in four says she's institute it tough to afford contraception. The study plant 18 percent of women who are up~ the birth-control pill sometimes jump doses or entire months to prevent money.

"I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate surplus between respecting religious freedom and increasing means of approach to important preventive services," Kathleen Sebelius, the clerk of Health and Human Services, uttered in announcing the policy last month.

The executive department also pointed out that 28 states even now require insurance plans to cover contraception on the supposition that they cover other prescription drugs. In greatest in quantity cases, however, religious institutions can earn around that requirement through exemptions and loopholes.

The fresh mandate offers just one loophole: Any employer, including a exact institution, can continue to offer the sort health benefits it currently provides, in this way long as the plan is frozen exactly viewed like is. If the employer or underwriter raises costs, tweaks deductibles or changes the benefits in at all way - which happens very frequently in in the greatest degree plans - the new rules apply.

Many Catholics - including guide Catholic supporters of Obama - said the president gravely miscalculated, attached both the moral issue and the politic implications.

"These are questions that concur to the heart of who we are as a people and as a ecclesiastical authority," said Douglas Kmiec, a conservative ~ized scholar who broke from his peer Republicans to campaign for Obama in 2008 of the same kind with part of an influential group called Catholics against Obama. "There's no question this determination cause complications for Obama."

Obama won the Catholic promised decisively in 2008, on the validity of strong support from Hispanic Catholics. But polls likeness that a sizeable number of Catholics had before that time begun to shift allegiances to the Republican Party previous to this decision. While Catholics as a assign places to still lean left, the Democrats held each edge of just six percentage points amidst the group last year - down from 16 percentage points in 2008, according to polling by the Pew Research Center.

Political analysts ~ing even before this decision, Obama faced a tough brave holding on to support from innocent, working-class Catholics in battleground states like as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. It was votes from that bloc that helped urge on Republican George W. Bush to conquest in 2004.

Another crucial group instead of the president: Hispanic Catholics in swing states such as Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado. Polls confer many Latino voters are already upset at Obama concerning deporting a record number of unlawful immigrants during his presidency; for more, this could be the final beat.

"I don't know what to apprise you except that everyone's in continuance stunned," said Robert Aguirre, president of the Catholic Association of Latino Leaders, a nonprofit dispose of business owners and civic leaders.

Obama could take some especially big hit on the end politically if the Republicans pick Florida Senator Marco Rubio to the degree that a vice presidential nominee, political analysts said. Rubio, who is Catholic, has filed a poster to overturn the contraception mandate and could remain the issue alive.

A POLITICAL MISCALCULATION?

Catholics who consider worked closely with the White House attached various issues said they believe the control misjudged the response for several reasons.

Polls expound that as many as 98 percent of Catholic women in the United States require used birth control, despite the ecclesiastical body's teachings.

And Obama received important support from Catholics in his grueling hale condition-care fight; though the bishops hostile his overhaul, other prominent voices in the house of worship supported him on the grounds that extending coverage to greater amount of Americans furthered social justice.

So the superintendence may well have believed that inconsistency to expanded contraceptive coverage would exist muted, said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a national Catholic neighborly-justice lobbying group. "You could argue they miscalculated," she said.

Indeed, various groups that supported Obama's whole health-care goals have issued sharp statements opposing the new mandate. "The superintendence got focused on the substance and missed the higher-suit issue of conscience," said Campbell.

For Casillas, the ob/gyn in south California, that issue of conscience is superior. It doesn't violate his moral sense to prescribe birth control - but he knows other Catholics be seized of a different take. "I want to keep their ability to maintain their mental compass," he said.

Catholics who persist to back Obama despite their horror at the contraception mandate say they'll entreat voters to consider all of the president's policies, not condign this one ruling.

That tactic worked in 2008, whereas Catholics for Obama put out radio ads and booklets arguing that Obama's policies in successi~ aiding the poor and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were in thread with Catholic social justice teachings - and made him a just choice for president, despite his aid for legal abortion.

The president seemed to exist laying the groundwork for a tell over of that campaign when he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast extreme week. He told the crowd of devotional leaders that many of his policies, including his appeal for the wealthy to pay other thing in taxes, sprang from Biblical teaching. "For me as a Christian," Obama before-mentioned, the proposed tax hike "coincides by Jesus's teaching that 'for unto whom abundant is given, much shall be required.'"

It's unclear in what way well that tactic will play in this power to choose, after the latest furor. "The Obama campaign went deficient in of its way in 2008 to court Catholics," declared Stephen Schneck, a political scientist at the Catholic University of America who has advised the president steady outreach. "This could be messing everything that up."

(Reporting By Stephanie Simon in Denver; Additional reporting ~ the agency of Lily Kuo in Washington; Editing ~ the agency of Claudia Parsons)

@yahoonews on Twitter, be converted into a fan on Facebook