Groups that oppose the contraception requirement are disappointed in the lack of follow-up. | AP Photos GOP's contraception fight fizzles

This spring, Republicans were on a mission: repeal the Obama administration’s rule to require employers to cover birth control.

House Speaker John Boehner even stood on the floor of the House in February and promised that Congress would act. “This attack by the federal government on religious freedom in our country must not stand and will not stand,” Boehner said.


But now, with the rule set to take effect Wednesday — part of the “Obamacare” law the GOP hates so much — the fiery repeal rhetoric has fizzled. In fact, few on Capitol Hill are saying anything about it at all.

And that House vote to block the rule? Never happened — and isn’t in the works either. A group of die-hards on the issue asked for it again in a closed-door meeting Wednesday with House leadership but said no promises were made.

Even Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), one of the most vocal critics of the rule and co-sponsor of a bill to eliminate it, has gone quiet now that the rule is about to kick in.

It’s a reminder of how fast things changed for Republicans this spring.

What looked like a great attack line against the president on religious liberty — and a chance to rally evangelical and Catholic voters against President Barack Obama — quickly morphed into another example of what the left dubbed the Republicans’ “war on women.”

And it seems like House Republican leadership took the attacks to heart. A small group of House Republicans and religious liberty groups are trying to get the issue going again — including attempts to get the courts to halt it — but they’re not getting any traction with top Republicans.

“The administration’s mandate is an attack on religious freedom in America and that it needs to be reversed,” Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel, told POLITICO. “We’re working closely with the Catholic bishops and others committed to religious liberty to find a path that will undo this attack on religious freedom.”

The House did vote earlier this month to repeal the entire health care reform law, which includes the requirement to cover contraceptives as a necessary preventive health services. But it has yet to take a vote that singles out the contraception policy itself.

On Wednesday, several House Republicans asked GOP leaders to hold a vote to repeal the policy, even though it would stand little chance in the Senate — which already voted down a similar measure last spring. But the meeting was described as just a listening session, and the lawmakers didn’t get any commitments.

Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and several other Republicans told leadership that they want to make a statement against the policy. They’ll also hold their own press conference on Aug. 1, when the rule goes into effect.

“I think we should make a clear statement on it, but I think ultimately we also know the Senate's not going to do a thing about it,” Lankford said. “So the real work of this is to try to find other avenues to be able to deal with it.”

Outside groups that oppose the contraception requirement are disappointed in the lack of follow-up — and they say Republicans on Capitol Hill should do more to keep attention on the issue.

“Honestly, I’m just disappointed” in Republicans, said Christen Varley, executive director of Conscience Cause — which features a countdown clock to Aug. 1 on its website. “I understand the politics of it … I get where people’s attention is right now. I’m concerned about the economy myself.” But she says, “It’s [Congress members’] job to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

At the beginning of the year, the policy ran into a fiery backlash from Catholic groups and other critics, who charged that it violated the religious beliefs of employers who have moral objections to providing birth control without a co-pay in employees’ insurance policies.

Most of those outside groups have the same concerns today, even after the White House announced a compromise that would require insurers to pay for the contraceptives at religious-affiliated institutions, not the institutions themselves.

But the issue faded away on Capitol Hill quickly after the debate led to P.R. disasters like the all-male House hearing on the contraception rule and Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who later testified at a Democratic hearing on the issue.

And by March 1, when the Senate narrowly defeated an amendment by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) to overturn the rule, the GOP fight was already losing steam. That day, Boehner promised only that “the House will decide on how we will proceed.”

Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), one of the House’s strongest abortion opponents, said not enough has been done on the issue.

“I’ve urged them to have a vote but it’s in the leadership’s hands,” he said. “Basically they have to make a decision on whether they have a vote or wait and find a must-pass bill. I think that’s what they’re struggling with.”

But not all of the rule’s opponents in the House are charging ahead. Fortenberry, the sponsor of the House bill to overturn the rule, declared in February that “I accept Speaker Boehner’s charge” to get rid of the rule. Now, he’s keeping a low profile on it.

Even the rule’s most vocal outside opponents, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, say they’re not doing anything to mark the day. They’re still mad about the rule, but they may not do much more than say they’re mad about it.

“The bishops still hope that the White House recognizes why they had these concerns,” said Don Clemmer, assistant director of media relations for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

That doesn’t mean the legal fight is over. Several religious liberty groups have asked the courts to step in and stop the policy from going into effect, arguing that it is unconstitutional to require anyone — in this case, Catholics — to supply a product that violates their religious beliefs.

The Thomas More Law Center, a legal group that also challenged the law’s individual mandate, has asked a federal judge in Michigan to grant a request to block the policy. The judge, Robert Cleland of the Eastern District of Michigan, was appointed in 1990 by the first President George Bush.

And on Friday, a U.S. District Judge in Colorado issued a three-month temporary injunction against the rule — but only for one business.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said the legal challenges help make the case to the public against the policy.

"I think the lawsuits are very important, and they crystallize the issue in a way that demonstrates the importance not only to Republican leadership but to all Americans,” he said.

Beginning Wednesday, all new insurance policies must cover contraceptives without a co-pay. For many people with employer-sponsored health insurance, the policy won’t go into effect until the first day of their next insurance plan year — often Jan. 1.

The backlash against the policy grew to a fever pitch early this year, with opponents arguing that the administration was violating centuries of constitutionally protected religious freedoms. While religious employers, such as churches, were exempt, other religious-affiliated institutions, such as Catholic hospitals, were not.

In response to the backlash, the administration said it would require insurance companies to pay for the contraceptive products at religious-affiliated institutions and provide a yearlong reprieve while it figured out new policy for religious employers who don’t have that option because they insure themselves.

The accommodation, as the administration called it, quieted a lot of the opposition, but not all of it. Religious-affiliated groups, such as Catholic hospitals that insure themselves, say there is still no solution that doesn’t require them to violate their religious beliefs against the use of contraceptives.

The Obama administration and supporters of the policy argue that contraceptives coverage is vital to women’s health.

"We decided to follow the judgment of the nation's leading medical experts and make sure that free preventive care includes access to free contraceptive care,” Obama said in February.

“Everyone should be in control of the decisions that affect her own health — period. This basic principle is already the law in 28 states across the country,” Obama said.

But even some of the health law’s backers say that’s not a good enough reason to ask Catholic organizations to provide something it morally objects to.

Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association and a prominent supporter of the health law, was initially open to the compromise — but then declared last month that it’s unworkable. In an interview with POLITICO this week, Keehan said both sides are still talking about how to find a solution — but there isn’t an answer now.

"I don’t know of any new, creative or very different accommodation that’s being put out there right now,” said Keehan, who opposes the contraceptives requirement as written. “It’s been an unexpected and to some extent frustrating new experience for all of us. I haven’t seen anything but goodwill on the part of everybody involved. But there’s goodwill and there’s deeply held convictions.”

Keehan said most CHA members qualify for the one-year reprieve, so the group is more focused on Aug. 1, 2013 than Aug. 1, 2012.

Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow at the Catholic Association — which is launching a social media campaign urging its supporters to contact members of Congress — says there’s been no compromise on behalf of the Obama administration.

“Aug. 1 is the day that religious liberty really changes in a significant way in this country,” she said.

She said more attention may be have been paid to the upcoming implementation date if the public understood how few institutions qualify for the one-year “safe harbor” reprieve.

“I think a lot of people are under the impression that everybody qualifies for the safe harbor,” McGuire said.

Eligible institutions have to be a nonprofit organization or a nonprofit institute of higher education (not private employers) that didn’t cover some or all forms of contraceptives on or after Feb. 10, 2012, because they had religious objections.

For instance, Wheaton College, which joined with The Catholic University of America to file a lawsuit last week against the requirement, doesn’t meet the criteria for the “safe harbor” period. Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund, which is representing the college, says that’s because the college’s employee plan “mistakenly” covered some forms of contraception after the cutoff date.

And many people say the administration’s accommodation still requires them to violate their beliefs.

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken, Wheaton’s president, called the accommodation “a shell game that does not resolve the moral issue.”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 2:16 p.m. on July 27, 2012.