Last week, the Obama administration required all U.S. employers to provide free contraception to their female employees through health insurance plans. This has become a contentious issue, as it entails that even organizations with religious affiliations that might oppose contraception on moral grounds must adhere to this new mandate.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been especially outraged at this, with Cardinal-elect Timothy Dolan describing the directive as an "attack on religious freedom," and that "to force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their health care is literally unconscionable." Those statements would be true if the President was infringing upon the First Amendment. This directive excludes houses of worship, meaning church employees would not be affected at all. Only organizations that employ many employees who desire contraception will be forced to offer them free birth control. This includes universities, hospitals and charitable organizations.

Obama's ruling is not designed to attack religious freedoms, but rather to protect minority rights. Fordham University is a perfect example of the necessity of this ruling. By Cardinal-elect Dolan's logic, because Fordham is a Jesuit institution it is justified in picking which benefits it gives its employees on a religious basis. However, thousands of Fordham employees who want access to contraception would be denied it due to Fordham's stance on birth control. With the majority of firms in the U.S. already offering free contraception under their health care plans, denying Fordham employees free contraception becomes a denial of rights, rather than an infringement on religious freedoms. If a woman who works at Fordham objects to contraception, she does not need to "forgo [her] health care," as Dolan states, but rather choose not to utilize the benefits at her disposal. If anything, all this mandate does is further rebuff the right to deny citizens health care. 

There should be no issue passing this mandate. The Church has been vocal about the injustice of this policy, yet 28 states already enforce similar laws to ensure birth control is covered in health care plans. Most laws have been in effect for almost a decade and upheld in state Supreme Courts. In 2004, the California Supreme Court noted that many employees of Catholic charities are not Catholic and thus rejected the organizations' challenge to overturn the law. The court stated that organizations are required to protect workers, even if those protections conflict with their political or religious stance.

These issues have been played on a state level, where protection of the worker has trumped religious affiliation of the organization time and again. These new mandates are not evil and not new; they merely expedite the process of individual states adopting the policy. By skewing the narrative towards an infringement of the First Amendment, Catholic leaders are shaming themselves to not allow average Americans to see the good this policy will do.