Feb 10 (Reuters) - As soon as the news hit, the deluge began.
Catholics from across the country began calling the White House within hours of the Obama administration's announcement on Jan. 20 that religious institutions would be required to offer free birth control to employees as a health-care benefit.
But these calls weren't protests from conservative bishops or the rank-and-file in the pews. They were calls from a kitchen cabinet of informal political advisers that President Barack Obama had relied on for years -- allies who had worked with him on various social issues and in some cases, campaigned for him.
They had access, and they intended to use it to drive change in a policy they said they saw as a clumsy, provocative and an unnecessary infringement on religious liberty.
Among the many who called: Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana; Stephen Schneck, a political scientist at the Catholic University of America; and Sister Simone Campbell, who runs a Catholic social-justice lobby in Washington.
They reached out to friends in the Obama campaign, in the office of Vice President Joe Biden, in the White House domestic policy shop and its office of faith-based initiatives, in the Department of Health and Human Services.
One even wrote a proposed speech for the president, in which Obama would admit he'd been wrong and offer a compromise.
"A daily dunning," is how Campbell described it.
UNCERTAIN FOOTING
From the start, Obama officials were receptive to calls for change, Campbell and others said. But they seemed uncertain about how to proceed, and the talks had little urgency.
People close to the White House said formulating the policy on contraceptive coverage had been a bruising fight, lasting for months last fall and into the winter, with deep divisions among senior staff - including its Catholics - about the wisdom of requiring Catholic colleges and hospitals to subsidize free birth control for their employees in the name of improving women's health care access.
The administration seemed prepared for a furious protest from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a formidable adversary in the earlier debate over healthcare reform, people with knowledge of the internal debate said.
But officials appeared taken aback by the intensity of the pleas coming from close Obama allies, several of whom argued to anyone who would listen that the policy was not only morally wrong, but out of step with the president's values.
"This decision just seems not in keeping with the person he is," said Douglas Kmiec, a conservative legal scholar at Pepperdine University and an Obama supporter.
In their quest for a compromise, Kmiec and other allies of the president focused at first on what was dubbed the "Hawaii solution." Hawaii requires all health insurance plans to cover contraception. But it lets religious employers delete that benefit from their plans - so long as they agree to refer any worker seeking contraceptive coverage to a third party that can provide it at nominal cost.
The HAWAII SOLUTION
The Hawaii model excited several Catholic allies, who thought it would neatly solve the problem by ensuring that religious employers didn't have to pay for the birth control benefits themselves.
But as talk about a Hawaii solution intensified, Catholic bishops moved to quash it, arguing that referring women to low-cost contraception would be as immoral as distributing the drugs and devices first-hand.
"The church must have the freedom to refuse to cooperate in any way in making these 'services' available," Bishop William Lori, who heads a committee on religious liberty, wrote on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops blog. "If we provide the means for another to act against the moral law, we ourselves become morally culpable as well."
That pronouncement came at the crest of a potent protest wave orchestrated by the bishops. Women's groups, meanwhile, had begun pushing back hard against suggestions of compromise.
Judy Waxman, a vice president of the National Women's Law Center, even said she would consider suing if the administration changed the policy in a way that required women to jump through any hoops to get their free contraception. "I see potential litigation in my future," she said before the compromise was reached.
Working frantically behind the scenes, Obama's loose-knit Catholic ally network continued to press its case. As noise on the issue grew, the allies said they began to gain traction with the White House. "As the momentum built, they realized, 'Uh oh, we've got trouble,' " said Campbell, the social-justice advocate.
Yet for days, a solution still seemed elusive. Several possible options would have required legislative approval, and given the divisions in Congress and heated election-year politics, Obama did not want to take that route, those familiar with the process said.
At the same time, said a senior Obama advisor, the president made clear he would not back down from his central point - that women employed by Catholic institutions should have the same right to free birth control, with no deductible and no co-pay, as woman employed by any other entity.
"It was hard figuring out the details of how this could work structurally," said John Gehring, who coordinates Catholic outreach for the group Faith in Public Life, a policy advocacy group generally aligned with Democratic policies.
As they struggled to find a solution, the would-be reformers found considerable support within the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership, where several staff members suggested they were not happy with the president's original policy. A key point person there: Joshua DuBois, the office head, who knew many of Obama's outside allies from the 2008 campaign and who reports to close Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett.
The faith office "was pressing very hard for a reasonable tweaking of the policy," Gehring said.
Those pushing for compromise also found a friend in Vice President Joe Biden, a fellow Catholic, who had argued from the beginning that religious employers should be exempt from the contraception mandate.
"He understands the Catholic community's views on these issues and is willing to speak up for them when appropriate," said James Salt, executive director of Catholics United, a group with a history of supporting liberal causes.
But though they were getting high-placed signals that a compromise could be worked out, no details emerged. As the days wore on and the political rhetoric grew louder, some Obama allies got discouraged. "The lines in the sand are being drawn sharper and deeper, so I'm not optimistic," Schneck, the political scientist, said earlier this week.
On Friday, Schneck said he realized why he had received so little concrete information about the working compromise. The administration had been so divided in its deliberations about the rule, he said, that "they needed to work this out inside their own walls first," before floating it to key interest groups.
"This was an internecine struggle," he said.
A senior U.S. official said that many of the reports about the internal White House deliberations have been "overdramatized." Officials declined to comment further on internal discussions.
Late Thursday evening, administration officials reached out to Schneck and other involved parties to let them know an announcement was imminent. "There was a tremendous sense of relief," Gehring said.
Before unveiling his compromise Friday morning, Obama called Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America; and Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association of the United States.
Richards and Keehan welcomed the announcement. The Conference of Catholic Bishops has been more cautious, releasing a statement calling the new approach promising, but declining to endorse it fully.
The compromise allows religious employers to opt out of providing birth control coverage to employees. But in making that concession, Obama promised those employees that they could get free contraception all the same, courtesy of their health insurance providers.
Obama's Catholic allies said that approach hit all the right notes. "Very practical, very respectful, very common sense," Roemer said.
Sister Campbell wasn't so restrained: "This," she said, "is a glorious day."
