Supreme Court rules in favor of Hobby Lobby
The Conservative Supreme Court struck again. In a 5 to 4 decision it has ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, a closely held corporation. The New York Times reports the following.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-to-4 decision on Monday that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom.
The decision, which applied to two companies owned by Christian families, opened the door to challenges from other corporations to many laws that may be said to violate their religious liberty.
The coverage requirement was challenged by two corporations whose owners say they try to run their businesses on religious principles: Hobby Lobby, a chain of crafts stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, which makes wood cabinets.
The health care law and related regulations require many employers to provide female workers with comprehensive insurance coverage for a variety of methods of contraception. The companies objected to some of the methods, saying they are tantamount to abortion because they can prevent embryos from implanting in the womb. Providing insurance coverage for those forms of contraception would, the companies said, make them complicit in the practice.
Conservative dogma is completely against government encroachment on the lives of the individual. It is fascinating how the pole is moved based on arbitrary parameters. Government encroachment on a woman’s rights is acceptable to control her reproduction and reproductive rights. Corporate encroachment of women’s rights is acceptable in order to control a woman’s reproductive health. Maybe Viagra should be made illegal since it may be God’s will that after a certain age men should cease from having sex.
The point is that in this male dominated society, males continue to make laws both within government and within the Church that affect women. Kate Kelly’s story about her rights within the Mormon church is probative.
This Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case is not a trivial matter. A woman’s lack of control of her reproductive rights is more than a religious or social issue. It is an economic issue. The inability to effectively plan her own pregnancy has repercussions that do not affect men. Men cannot get pregnant.
Is there any doubt why every female Supreme Court Justice voted against Hobby Lobby? Anyone doubting that there is a war on women has a limited scope of thought when the issue is examined in its totality.
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After this decision, how can it possibly NOT be legal for Quakers (religious absolute pacifists) to refuse to pay all federal taxes (which are used to support the military)? That’s a MUCH clearer “freedom of religion” argument than Hobby Lobby had. (Yet somehow I doubt that the Supreme Court would see it that way – although they do surprise us every once in a while.)
SCOTUS enumerated in the majority decision that this does not necessarily apply to other religions and their beliefs, such as Jehovah’s witnesses and blood transfusions, or Jewish people and the use of pork-derived products. That statement does not at all signal preference for one religon over another, especially considering that all five of the judges who voted in favor of Hobby Lobby are Catholic.