WASHINGTON — Religious leaders told a House panel Thursday that the Obama administration was violating basic rights to religious freedom with its mandate requiring that insurance providers offer free birth-control coverage — including to employees of religion-affiliated institutions such as schools and hospitals.
The unity of the religious leaders contrasted with the partisan divide among lawmakers on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee — with Democrats saying they had been denied the ability to present witnesses who might support the government stance or speak for the rights of women to reproductive health coverage. They asked why women weren’t better represented among the 10 witnesses at the hearing.
The issue has sparked a political firestorm for the administration, with Catholics and other religious groups strongly protesting an original Health and Human Services ruling that all employers — including religion-affiliated institutions — must include free birth-control coverage in their employee health plans. Churches themselves were exempted from the requirement.
On Feb. 10, Obama modified that policy so that insurance companies, and not the organizations affiliated with a church, pay for birth-control costs — including sterilization — but that didn’t satisfy those testifying at the hearing.
Bishop William Lori, representing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, compared the mandate to a law forcing all food providers, including kosher delicatessens, to serve pork.
The policy has split Catholics. The head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, said this week that his group would launch both legislative and court challenges to the health care mandate. Yet there also are some Catholic groups and individuals who have come out in support of the president’s approach.
They were not at Thursday’s hearing.
“The chairman is promoting a conspiracy theory that the federal government is conducting a ‘war’ against religion,” the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, said of committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. “He has also refused to allow a minority witness to testify about the interests of women who want safe and affordable coverage for basic preventive health care, including contraception,” Cummings said of Issa.
Issa responded that the committee did accept one Democratic witness, the Rev. Barry Lynn, head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The original witness list had just one woman, Oklahoma Christian University senior vice president Allison Dabbs Garrett. A second woman, Calvin College medical director Dr. Laura Champion, was added shortly before the hearing.
