CHICAGO (Reuters) – Catholic clergy on Sunday called on the faithful to write Congress to protest new birth control rules from President Barack Obama’s administration, stepping up a campaign that began a week ago with denunciations from the pulpit at Masses across the country.
The fight is over a provision of the health reform law announced on Jan 20 that would require health insurance plans — including those offered by institutions such as Catholic-affiliated hospitals and universities — to offer free birth control including sterilization.
Republican presidential candidates New Gingrich and Rick Santorum seized on the issue on Sunday television talk shows, criticizing the Obama administration as misguided and anti-Catholic.
“He (Obama) has basically declared war on the Catholic Church,” Gingrich said on “Meet The Press” Sunday.
Asked if the contraceptives issue would rebound on Obama in the election, Gingrich said: “I think there are millions of people who are very disturbed by it.”
Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week that the contraception ruling could lose Obama the election because the Catholic vote is concentrated in battleground states.
The White House defended the policy, saying that only institutions such as hospitals that service a large non-Catholic community would have to
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