The health-care law threatens to tear gaping holes in that safety net by forcing Catholic health plans to cover contraception, by denying funds to Catholic adoption agencies, and ultimately by forcing taxpayers — including Catholics — to fund abortion.

The Obama administration announced it will wait for a year (coincidentally until after the elections) before requiring religious organizations to comply with an Obamacare mandate that they provide coverage for contraception — including controversial drugs that can abort an early pregnancy.

This started with a decision by the Obama administration last summer listing the “preventive” services that must be covered by health plans under Obamacare without
charge to patients, and the list included contraception.

This is another assault on the Constitution and the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) called the federal regulation an “unprecedented threat to individual and institutional religious freedom.”

The Obamacare regulation gives faith-based institutions, like Catholic universities and hospitals, the choice of violating the fundamental tenets of their faith by covering the federally mandated coverage in their employee health plans, or of dropping health insurance for their employees — in which case they would be fined for violating the employer mandate.

This is an outrage. Belmont Abbey, a private Catholic college located in North Carolina, is being joined by several other universities in suing the government over the mandate.

The administration gave religious organizations a very narrow exemption from the mandate, only if the group’s employees are primarily of one faith and primarily serve members of that faith.

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