{"id":13364,"date":"2017-10-14T10:00:44","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T10:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2017\/10\/14\/new-rule-on-moral-objections-to-contraception-aimed-at-2-groups\/"},"modified":"2017-10-14T10:00:44","modified_gmt":"2017-10-14T10:00:44","slug":"new-rule-on-moral-objections-to-contraception-aimed-at-2-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/new-rule-on-moral-objections-to-contraception-aimed-at-2-groups\/","title":{"rendered":"New Rule On Moral Objections To Contraception Aimed At 2 Groups"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Julie Rovner<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n People in the March for Life near the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 27.<\/p>\n

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Manuel Balce Ceneta\/AP<\/p>\n

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Manuel Balce Ceneta\/AP<\/p>\n

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Few people were surprised last week when the Trump administration issued a rule to make it easier for some religious employers to opt out of offering no-cost prescription birth control to their female employees under the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n

But a separate regulation<\/a> issued at the same time raised eyebrows. It creates a new exemption from the requirement that most employers offer contraceptive coverage. This one is for “non-religious organizations with sincerely held moral convictions inconsistent with providing coverage for some or all contraceptive services.”<\/p>\n

So what’s the difference between religious beliefs and moral convictions?<\/p>\n

“Theoretically, it would be someone who says ‘I don’t have a belief in God’ but ‘I oppose contraception for reasons that have nothing to do with religion or God,’ ” says Mark Rienzi, a senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty<\/a>, which represented many of the organizations that sued the Obama administration over the contraceptive mandate.<\/p>\n

Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan, says it would apply to “an organization that has strong moral convictions but does not associate itself with any particular religion.”<\/p>\n