Reid says he’ll allow the Senate to vote on contraception coverage amendment

By Karoun Demirjian

Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012 | 6:50 p.m.

WASHINGTON - For the past two weeks, the hot issue on the campaign trail has been contraception and whether or not religious institutions opposed to it should be obliged to offer their employees coverage in their health care plans.

Sen. Harry Reid has agreed to allow vote on the contraception question, he said Tuesday, in the form of an amendment to a transportation bill the Senate is considering. It was written by Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, and essentially seeks to establish in law what Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail have been calling for: a unfettered ability, on the part of religious institutions, to opt out of covering anything they find religiously or morally objectionable as part of an employer-sponsored health care plan.

Last Friday, as President Barack Obama was pivoting to amend his position on covering birth control that had ignited the controversy, especially in the Catholic community, Blunt chided the president for flying in the face of the constitution.

“It’s still clear that President Obama does not understand this isn’t about cost -- it’s about who controls the religious views of faith-based institutions,” Blunt said. “President Obama believes that he should have that control. Our constitution states otherwise.”

Nevada Republican Sen. Dean Heller has made similar statements in the last week, penning a message to Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius to tell her “the federal government does not have the right to tell religious groups to provide a service that violates their faith.”

But what is to some a threat to faith is to another a threat to a woman’s ability to make decisions about her own body.

Planned Parenthood -- an abortion provider, is no favorite of Republicans, but is one of the nation’s largest providers of women’s health services -- called on lawmakers to oppose the amendment, to protect the idea “that women, regardless of where they work, should have access to health insurance that covers preventive health care, including birth control, with no co-pays.”

That is essentially what Obama tried to guarantee Friday without upsetting religious authorities when he tweaked his position -- that religious institutions would have to allow women to access birth control under their health care plans -- to ensure that women would still be able to access the care, but the insurance company, not the religious institution, would be required to bear the cost of it.

Catholic institutions seemed convinced at first, but went on to register their discontent with the president’s middle ground over the weekend.

That’s left some Democrats in a difficult position as they attempt to support the president without alienating religious voters.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, who will not be voting on the Senate amendment this week, said in Reno yesterday that the president’s position was “a good one” that “protects basic religious freedoms, but it also provides women the opportunity to access basic preventative medical care.”

That is the sort of compromise Democratic leaders are hoping Senate Democrats will strike when they vote on the amendment this week. But as Reid sees it, this controversial issue is part of a more endemic problem. Reid complained Tuesday that amendments like the contraception question raise “issues that have nothing to do with the highway bill” and only clog up the legislative process on matters, such as the surface transportation measure the Senate is considering, that are important.

“We have one on contraception, one on Egypt now. Who knows the end of this?” Reid said Tuesday.