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The chairman of the U.S. bishops' Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty went before Congress to urge rescission of the Department of Health and Human Services' contraceptive mandate or passage of the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. Bishop William E. Lori's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee focused on some of the "absurd and surreal consequences" of the mandate and the "accommodation" announced by President Barack Obama, which the bishop called "a legally unenforceable promise to alter the way the mandate would still apply to those who are still not exempt from it." He said: "'Without change' suddenly means 'with change.' 'Choice' suddenly means 'force.'" The bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., who addressed the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee February 16 on a similar topic, was joined at the hearing by a Muslim-American attorney, the director of the Family Research Council's Center for Human Dignity and a physician who chaired the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Preventive Services for Women. Following the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine panel, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced last year that nearly all health plans -- with only a very narrow religious exemption -- would be required to cover sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including some that can cause an abortion. Obama's revised mandate says religious employers could decline to cover contraceptives if they were morally opposed to them, but the health insurers that provide their health plans would be required to offer contraceptives free of charge to women who requested such coverage. But Bishop Lori said the mandate "has suddenly turned the world upside down" by making commonly understood words mean something entirely different.

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