“Supreme Court rules in favor of women’s health.”
That’s what the headlines would have read yesterday if the conservative justices appointed to the Supreme Court hadn’t voted to allow corporations to deny women basic health care in opposition to the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
Unfortunately for the nation’s women, the Court ruled 5-4 that certain for-profit companies cannot be required to cover contraceptives for their employees. The corporations involved in the case — including Hobby Lobby, a Christian bookstore chain and a Pennsylvania-based woodworking company owned by Mennonites — claim that Obamacare infringes upon religious freedoms granted in the First Amendment.
They take issue with Obamacare’s requirement that all health insurance policies cover a package of essential services, including things like cancer screenings, vaccines and, most offensively, birth control.
I’m not sure why anyone is actually surprised by this ruling. Conservative Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito as well as resident flip-flopper Kennedy voted in favor of the overtly religious arts and crafts store, while liberal Justices Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan voted in favor of women.
I think it’s important to note that not one female justice on the Supreme Court voted in favor of denying women healthcare.
Arguably, a lot of confusion surrounds contraception, and I think it’s because the female reproductive system is shrouded in such mystery. Or maybe the confusion is due to the embarrassing lack of comprehensive sex education in America. Who knows?
Either way, these “biblical” corporations, along with the “family values” conservatives, seem to be convinced that birth control and even Plan B cause abortions when, in fact, they prevent them.
Justice Ginsburg wrote a scathing dissent in response to yesterday’s decision, saying, “the court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.” She hit the nail on the head.
The Supreme Court sees corporations as people and their money as free speech, while women’s voices are drowned out by well-meaning but uninformed religiously affiliated businesses. We seem to have no voice at all on an issue that affects only us. We can’t rely on having access to basic health care.
God forbid these corporations be forced to pay for the sins of harlots. Yet in the same breath, I haven’t seen these religious corporations debating the fact that many employee health care packages already include coverage for erectile dysfunction drugs (at $15 per pill), penis pumps (anywhere from $300 to $500), penile implants ($10,000 to $20,000), vasectomies ($500 to $1,000) and circumcision (more than $100 out of pocket).
Women choose to have sex outside of marriage. And women who choose to have sex outside of or within a marriage are not always looking to start a family. Sounds crazy, right?
These are facts that are hard to swallow for corporations like Hobby Lobby.
And now the highest court in the land has ruled against women’s health because of it.