Obama Botches Birth Control

E.J. Dionne makes the case that the Obama administration lost an opportunity to be mindful of religious liberty when it promulgated rules on contraceptive coverage in the new healthcare law:

One of Barack Obama’s great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive services should be treated under the new health care law.

His administration mishandled this decision not once but twice. In the process, Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus, strengthened the very forces inside the Church that sought to derail the health care law, and created unnecessary problems for himself in the 2012 election.