Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services made an important decision when it comes to women’s health care and equality. As part of the Affordable Care Act, it required all new health insurance plans to provide coverage of preventive health care, including birth control without extra costs or co-pays.

At Planned Parenthood of Hawaii, we were happy to hear this news. We strongly believe that access to birth control is essential to good health. Last year we served more than 8,700 patients, the majority of whom were seeking preventive health services. Every day we serve women who are in need of quality, affordable contraceptive care. Many of our patients use hormonal birth control to maintain their health and well being. Many more rely on birth control services to prevent unintended pregnancy and to plan and space childbirth.

Across Hawaii, almost 150,000 women seek access to birth control every year. For some, the cost of care is a significant barrier. A little less than half, or 67,300, of Hawaii’s women in need of contraceptive care and supplies require financial assistance to obtain them. The HHS decision to give more women access to affordable contraception goes a long way toward helping Hawaii’s women raise healthy families and stay healthy themselves.

Unfortunately, over the past few months, conservative House of Representative members and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have been working to undermine this important decision. They are now asking President Barack Obama to expand an existing religious exemption to allow Catholic hospitals, universities and nonprofit organizations to refuse to provide insurance plans that cover birth control without extra costs to their employees and students, even though these individuals may not share their religious beliefs and practices.

THE original HHS rule already includes a broad religious exemption that applies to nonprofit organizations that have religious values as the purpose of the organization, employ those who share the religious tenets of the organization, and serve primarily people who share the religious tenets of the organization.

Hawaii is home to 41 Catholic schools and early education providers and one major Catholic university. The teachers, faculty and staff, and students at these institutions all could lose coverage of birth control care as a result of the expanded religious exemption.

ALSO AT STAKE are benefits for the hundreds of employees of two large Catholic-run nonprofits here. Nationally, the numbers are even larger, with almost 800,000 employees of Catholic hospitals and more than 2 million students and teachers at Catholic universities whose benefits would be jeopardized.

Keep in mind that the HHS rule never requires an organization to dispense birth control, or an individual to take it. By seeking permission to deny employees and students coverage of the benefit, these conservative groups are seeking the ability to deny them affordable contraceptive care outright, no matter where they seek it.

Women of all faiths use birth control. In fact, 98 percent of sexually experienced Catholic women in the U.S. have used birth control at some point in their lives, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Seventy-one percent of American voters, including 77 percent of Catholic women voters, support the requirement that health plans cover birth control at no cost.

The proposed expansion of HHS’s already broad religious exemption threatens the wellbeing of thousands of women in Hawaii — whether they are a nurse at a Catholic hospital, an outreach worker at a nonprofit, or a student at our Catholic university.

In the interest of promoting healthy families throughout Hawaii and the rest of the country, the president should reject calls to expand the refusal clause regarding birth control coverage. Everyone should be able to benefit from affordable health care, no matter where they work.