Obama changes contraception rules in face of religious backlash

President Barack Obama, with health and human services secretary Kathleen Sebelius, announced a compromise over contraceptive coverage. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

In response to a wave of opposition from the the conservative right and the Catholic church, President Barack Obama announced a compromise in the dispute over whether to require full contraception insurance coverage for female employees at religiously affiliated institutions.

The issue has grown into a dangerous one for Obama, threatening to alienate Catholics in an election year and providing an opening for conservatives who are accusing him of an offensive against religious freedom.

The Catholic church argues it is morally wrong to ask it to provide female employees with health insurance that includes payment for contraception.

In his remarks at the White House on Friday, the president criticised a "cynical desire on the part of some to make this into a political football".

"No woman's health should depend on who she is or where she works or how much money she makes," Obama said. But "the principle of religious liberty" is also at stake. "As a citizen and as a Christian, I cherish this right."

The White House proposed a compromise that will allow religious organisations to opt out of providing coverage that would include birth control for women. But insurers will be required to offer complete coverage free of charge to any women who work at such institutions.

In a continuation of the current law, female employees at churches themselves will have no guarantee of any contraception coverage.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops withheld judgement on the compromise, saying in a statement they would study it and that it was too soon to tell whether and how much of an improvement it was to core concerns.

The White House compromise also risks alienating Democratic women who regard payment for contraception as an important right.

In an election expected to be dominated by the economy, the move has brought social issues back to the forefront.

Republican presidential candidates are accusing Barack Obama of launching a war on religion, a line of attack that is resonating round the country.

At the biggest conservative conference of the year, the Conservative Political Action Conference, meeting in Washington and attracting about 10,000 activists, speaker after speaker has denounced the Obama adminstration over the issue.

Rick Santorum, one of four presidential candidates who won three victories this week in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, raised the issue in his his speech on Friday.

"Obama is now telling the Catholic church they are going to have to pay for things that are against their basic tenets," Santorum, a Catholic, told C-Pac.

Mike Huckabee, a presidential candidate in 2008 and a man still popular with the conservative grassroots, told the conference on Friday morning that while the economy should rightly be an election issue, so too should the sanctity of life. Huckabee, a Baptist pastor, spoke words he said he never thought he would hear himself speak: "We are all Catholics now."

He saracastically thanked Obama for uniting conservatives.

Bishop William Lori, head of a committee on religious freedom, wrote on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops blog: "The church must have the freedom to refuse to cooperate in any way in making these 'services' available. If we provide the means for another to act against the moral law, we ourselves become morally culpable as well."