The continuing battle between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church over birth control, almost 50 years after the issue was settled for virtually all women in the U.S., can be summed up in one word: overreach.

President Obama wants virtually all women who get health insurance at work to receive free birth control as part of their plans. That's a laudable goal, but one with constitutional limits. Though churches were exempted, the Catholic Church bristled at the idea that its affiliated organizations ― Catholic colleges, charities, hospitals ― were being told to increase access to birth control, contrary to the dictates of the faith. And rightly so.

After weeks of heavy pressure, the administration beat a partial retreat. But then the church overreached. It sued to get the contraception mandate tossed out ― for all employers, not just religious ones. In effect, it is attempting to apply its view of contraception to non-Catholics. Never mind that huge majorities of Catholics ignore the church's teachings on contraception.

Along the way, the fight turned into one more overheated political battle. One side calls it a war on Catholics; the other calls it a war on women. In fact, it's a war on reason, in which the facts are increasingly obscured.

Contraception was included in the list of basic health insurance requirements under the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) because the Institute of Medicine, the respected arbiter of such things, said it should be. That's hardly surprising. The public reached essentially the same conclusion long ago: Contraception prevents unwanted pregnancies, reducing abortion and enabling family planning. So it became widely available.

Making it easy to get has always made sense.

But in crafting its mandate, the administration was too zealous. It restricted the religious exemption to institutions that primarily employ and serve individuals of the same faith. That's the opposite of what many Catholic organizations do in their open-armed outreach to the community. It also put the government in the impossible position of judging whether church-affiliated institutions are sufficiently religious.

In an attempt at compromise, the administration then proposed an accounting device that would allow the employees to get contraception coverage without specific employer support. Some Catholic groups, particularly hospitals, welcomed the move. But it was less a fix than a fig leaf hiding the way money is allocated. Last month, 43 Catholic organizations, including 13 dioceses, filed lawsuits, nearly all of which seek to strike down the Obama mandate on all free contraception.

By trying to impose their religious values on those of other faiths, they converted themselves from principled defenders of religious freedom into one more battalion of combatants in the nation's political and culture wars.

That will make a solution more difficult, which is a shame because one is hiding in plain sight. After decades of church/state fights, federal law already has several constitutionally vetted definitions of religious exemptions. The administration should adopt the most expansive of those, such as one that exempts employers who share "religious bonds and convictions" with a church.

The public health impact would be minimal, and the bishops couldn't easily say no.

As for the church's attempt to limit birth control coverage for non-Catholics, it would be wiser to tend to its own flock.

This article was published and distributed by USA Today.