Obama Administration Tweaks Birth Control Mandate To Appease Religious Nonprofits

The Obama administration announced an alteration to its birth control mandate Friday that seeks to accommodate religious nonprofits and some private companies by allowing them to refuse providing birth control to their employees. The tweak in the policy allows employees to still receive birth control coverage through a third party administrator.

The change to the Health and Human Services mandate was announced Friday by the Obama administration. Under the new policy, nonprofit religious groups that object to providing birth control to their employees can voice their grievances directly to the federal government, instead of having to contact the insurance company to deny the birth control coverage.

Under the new policy, the federal government will then contact a third party administrator that would provide the option of birth control insurance to employees. Nonprofit religious groups had voiced their disapproval of the previous policy because it still forced them to authorize the coverage of birth control with an outside company, an action which they found to be immoral.

The Health and Human Services branch of the Obama administration said in a statement Friday that this new procedure "[lays] out an additional way for organizations eligible for an accommodation to provide notice of their religious objection to providing coverage for contraceptive services."

The administration added Friday that it is seeking suggestions from some for-profit companies on how the new policy can be applied to them, as currently it only applies to religious nonprofits. The policy was tweaked following the June Supreme Court ruling that favored Hobby Lobby, a national chain of craft stores that opposed providing contraception to their employees based on their strongly-held evangelical Christian beliefs.

The Health and Human Services administration said it is seeking a new plan that would provide "the same accommodation that is available to non-profit religious organizations" for some for-profit companies with religious owners. 

"The proposal seeks comment on how to define a closely held for-profit company and whether other steps might be appropriate to implement this policy."