This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 15th, 2013. I'm Caleb Brown.

The contraceptive mandate buried in Obamacare effectively pits the law against the religious liberty of Americans.

The government's remedy is to provide piecemeal exemptions and otherwise delay dealing

with the matter head on.

Ilia Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute,

says it's a small island in an increasingly collectivized religious landscape.

When we talk about religious faith as it applies to constitutional law.

In reading what you've written here, it strikes me, and I think it's just

strikes a lot of people, how narrow they've construed this idea of conscience.

That's right and we're talking in the context of Obamacare of course because that seems to

affect every aspect of public policy and philosophy these days. in terms of the so-called

contraceptive mandate that is that the qualifying insurance plans have to pay for

all sorts of FDA-approved contraceptives and I have no problem with these

contraceptives but a lot of people do for religious reasons and so they're in a

bit of a conundrum early on the Department of Health and Human Services exempted religious

organizations defined narrowly as worship organizations, churches,

purely religious service organizations like that.

There was still an outcry because of course

a lot of churches and other religious groups

operate schools and homeless shelters and

hospitals and things like that.

And those wouldn't be exempt.

...