Now instead of consulting with your doctor, loved ones and insurance company, your boss will dictate what contraceptive methods, if any, are affordable for you.
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The Supreme Court is on a roll to limit women’s reproductive freedoms in America, with potential implications to a variety of other health issues for women, men and kids as well. On the heals of the nonsensical Massachusetts Clinic Buffer Zone ruling, comes the nonsensical Hobby Lobby decision that a privately held for-profit corporation can decide to opt out of the contraception and screening care provisions of the affordable care act, on personal religious grounds.
The 5 Justice majority based their decision on The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), which prohibits:
“Government [from] substantially burden[ing] a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability… At issue here are regulations promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act of 2010 (ACA), which, as relevant here, requires specified employers’ group insurance plans to furnish ‘preventative care and screenings’ for women without “any cost sharing requirements.”
Hobby Lobby is an arts-and-crafts chain, owned by an evangelical Christian family, and Conestoga Wood Specialists, is a cabinet making business, owned by the Mennonite Hahn family. In their suit ,these two companies contended that since their religions consider certain birth-control methods immoral, they are not obliged to help provide them to their employees under the religious-freedom law and therefore don’t have to comply with that affordable care act requirement.
The issue centers on what it means to be a “person” and whether corporations are a corporate “personhood” for purposes of denying and limiting access to “preventative care and screening.”
RFRA, passed in 1993 with bipartisan support, was a bill introduced by Charles Schumer of New York. In a statement Monday, Mr Schumer indicated that the Supreme Court’s decision is “dead wrong” and went on to say that The Religious Freedom Restoration Act was:
“Intended to give individuals the ability to exercise their religious beliefs without government interference and not intended to extend the same protections to for-profit corporations whose very purpose is to profit from the open market.”
A supporting brief by the research and policy group Guttmacher Institute indicated that:
“Many women cannot afford the most effective means of birth control and that the law will reduce unintended pregnancies and abortions”
I would add here that preventing unintended pregnancies and especially abortions should be the goal of everyone and especially those with religious beliefs and the ones that believe that life begins at conception.
In the majority opinion, Justice Alito explained, following and reminiscent of the logic in the political campaign funding Citizens United decision, that:
” A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends, so that, when rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people.”
That logic would work if the human beings in the corporation all agreed on this issue and supported it, and if the purpose of the corporation is to promote religion, like non-profit Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or any other religion based organizations. When decision making power is given to powerful owners of a privately held for-profit business (where the business is not religion), to decide which health benefits would be available to their employees, it effectively denies those employees (who may and often have other religious beliefs), access to health care choices and treatments their doctors recommend, and is a violation of the employees individual health care rights and choices, in favor of beliefs and choices of their bosses.
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ginsberg touched on this critical issue and said:
“The Court forgets that religious organizations exist to serve a community of believers. For- profit corporations do not fit this bill…This opens the door for for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faith. Would the exemption for employers with religiously grounded objections to use certain contraceptives extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations (Christian Scientists), among others?
Health care should be an issue and choice between a person and their doctor (some methods are not medically possible for some individuals). People have a right to make those choices and they should be encouraged to make the right ones. Engaging in preventative care benefits society as a whole in addition to each individual. Preventative care is cheaper and produces healthier individuals who are more productive in their business and live longer and healthier lives.
Family planning is a freedom each person deserves and it can be achieved with affordable and available forms of birth control with best choices for each individual woman’s medical needs. Hobby Lobby claims to cover some birth control methods but not others (do they know that the pill prevents ovulation so there is no egg to fertilize and no conception?) The big question is: Does your employer have the right to dictate to you which health care treatment or procedure is covered under your employee insurance plan, and specifically which kinds of birth control, or should that be a decision between you and your doctor?
Parting thought: Does Hobby Lobby employer insurance plan cover vasectomies and erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra ,and if so, is that because man birth control procedure and sexual function pills don’t offend their religious beliefs? And if they did offend their religious beliefs and were removed from the plan, what would the Supreme Court say?
Photo: Coffee Party USA /Flicker
The post Need Contraception for Health and Family Planning? Ask Your Boss. appeared first on The Good Men Project.
