On Contraception, Framing of the Debate Is Key

Gerald Seib writes in The Wall Street Journal:

In political debate, the side that prevails often is the side that manages to define the issue in the way it prefers. And so it is with the still-simmering debate between church and state over insurance coverage of contraception.

If the issue is defined as a question of birth control in the weeks and months ahead, the Obama administration and Democrats will have the upper hand. If Republicans succeed in defining the issue as a question of religious liberty, the balance will shift in their direction.

The one thing that's clear is that this debate—over whether the government can require Catholic institutions to provide contraceptive services to their employees—isn't over. More likely, the argument is merely shifting to new ground, to Congress, where legislation that seeks to change the policy sits on the runway, and to the presidential-campaign trail, where the effort to define the issue is likely to continue through November.

By now, the outlines of this debate are well known. The administration imposed a rule that would have, among other things, required large Catholic institutions, notably hospitals and schools, to offer free contraception services as part of insurance coverage for their employees.

Catholic bishops erupted in protest, arguing that the ruling would require them to cover not just birth control but sterilization and morning-after pills despite their moral opposition. The administration backtracked some, shifting the responsibility for paying for contraception to insurance companies.

Anybody who thought that would mollify the bishops now knows otherwise. A message the bishops sent to Catholic parishes for insertion into Sunday bulletins declares: "The proposed 'accommodation'—even at its best—would still force our institutions to violate our beliefs" because the religious institutions still bear the overall cost of the policies that insurance companies provide.

Catholics in the Washington area also got a separate letter from their archbishop, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, noting that the capital's archdiocese can't shift the cost of contraception to an insurance company because it self-insures its 3,600 employees. The administration's action, the cardinal argued, "continues to violate our constitutionally protected religious liberty."

That phrase points to the key political question, which is whether this is a debate about contraception or religious freedom. The difference is enormous, as a look inside one recent poll shows.

The CNN poll asked Americans whether they thought use of birth control is wrong. Just over 80% of all Americans said they don't consider birth control wrong; that sentiment was shared by 77% of Catholics.

But when asked whether they approve of the administration's policy on the subject, Americans divided almost evenly between support and opposition. Similarly, a recent Pew Research Council poll found Americans about evenly split on the policy, with Catholics somewhat more in favor of giving religious institutions an exemption to the federal insurance mandate.

In other words, support for birth control is considerably higher than support for a government rule requiring coverage of it, among both Catholics and non-Catholics.

That's why the administration prefers to frame this as a debate about access to birth control. The White House figures it can make that kind of debate a winner for itself, especially with women, and especially if the Democrats' foil is Rick Santorum, a GOP presidential candidate willing to talk about what he has called the "dangers of contraception" and the "sexual libertine" culture it has helped produce.

But a debate about religious freedom or a perceived erosion in the separation of church and state isn't such a winner for the administration. Many voters unhappy with Catholic teachings on birth control likely are equally unhappy with government imposing policies onto religious institutions. Perhaps more dangerous for the administration is the possibility that this fight, sparked by a regulation issued under the health-care overhaul of 2010, could sow seeds of doubt about the law.

It's hardly unusual for the terms of a debate to be crucial to its outcome. For the administration of George H.W. Bush, it was important that the first Persian Gulf war be seen not as a fight with Iraq but as a fight for the liberation of Kuwait. President Bill Clinton didn't want to cut welfare, but he was happy to sign welfare-to-work legislation. And earlier in the Obama term, economic stimulus became a loaded term, so the 2009 stimulus bill became the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Thus, it's of more than passing importance whether the issue is seen as the birth-control debate of 2012 or the religious-liberty debate of 2012.