Mitt Romney on Thursday accused President Obama of launching a "war on religion," further escalating the attacks the campaigns have exchanged in the dog days of summer and highlighting Romney's growing comfort with a topic some considered a liability for his White House prospects: health care.
Romney's attack focused on Obama's demand that health insurance plans provide free contraceptives to women even if the plan is administered by an employer, like a charity, that objects for religious reasons. Obama touts the initiative, part of his health care reforms, to rally female voters, but Romney, a devout Mormon, is trying to turn the policy around as an attack on people of faith.
Romney launched the new attack in a television ad just one day after Obama accused Romney of spearheading a "war on women" that includes defunding Planned Parenthood.
"President Obama used his health care plan to declare war on religion, forcing religious institutions to go against their faith," the new Romney ad states. "When religious freedom is threatened, who do you want to stand with?"
Obama faced a backlash from churches and other religious organizations earlier this year when he announced that all employers would have to provide free contraceptives through their health insurance plans. The president backed off, exempting churches, but is still under pressure to permanently exempt all religiously affiliated employers including hospitals and schools. The Catholic Health Association said the policy is still "unlikely to adequately meet the religious liberty concerns of all of our members."
Romney's ad goes beyond portraying Obama as hostile to religion. In the spot, Romney quotes Pope John Paul II and highlights a recent trip to Poland, the late pope's homeland, where Romney received the endorsement of former Polish President Lech Walesa.
Romney, who would be the first Mormon to secure a major-party nomination for president, is open about his faith, but his new ad marks his most aggressive attempt to make religion an issue in the campaign. That could help him with conservatives, who have been reluctant to embrace the former governor of Massachusetts, and it could help at least offset some of the gains Obama made with women by touting his support for reproductive rights.
"Obama raised [contraceptives] in the first place by using it as a wedge issue to win over women," said Frank Donatelli, chairman of the GOPAC conservative political action committee and former political director under President Reagan. "There is some running room there with Catholic voters -- bishops are pretty exercised about this."
The Obama campaign attacked the Romney claim as inaccurate.
"Churches are completely exempt and religiously affiliated organizations that object to providing the service will never have to pay for contraception," Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said. "Mitt Romney apparently disagrees with this approach and it's no surprise why. He has pledged to 'get rid of' federal funding for Planned Parenthood."
Romney's ad is the latest round in an increasingly vitriolic campaign air war. Obama has been running ads in battleground states, including Virginia, in which women talk about their fears of losing reproductive rights in a Romney presidency. An outside group backing Obama escalated the rhetoric this week with an ad that blamed Romney for the cancer-related death of a former steel worker's wife.
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