(Reuters) – Dr. Joe Casillas, an obstetrician in Southern California, routinely prescribes birth control for his patients. Though he’s a practicing Catholic, he doesn’t follow his church’s stern warning that contraception is a sin. He believes women should have access.
Yet Casillas was dismayed when the Obama administration recently ruled that religious institutions had to follow the same rules as other employers and offer free contraception as part of health insurance coverage. The idea that the government would force Catholic hospitals to subsidize birth control – or, to avoid the mandate, drop health insurance for their employees – appalled him.
Now Casillas, a registered Democrat who voted for Obama in 2008, says he is not at all sure he can back the president for a second term. “It’s given me pause,” he said.
Similar shockwaves are reverberating across the country, as Obama’s refusal to exempt religious employers from this provision of his health-care law has deeply angered many Catholics – who will make up a crucial, and unpredictable, chunk of the electorate in the November presidential election. About one in four U.S. voters is Catholic and as a group they have swung back and forth between Democrats and Republicans.
In recent days, the administration
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