A decision has been rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court in
the Hobby Lobby case. The reaction to that decision in Connecticut among
prominent Democrats was instantaneous. State Democratic chairwoman Nancy
DiNardo said, “If you believe in progress for women, if you believe we cannot
turn back the clock, and if you believe that women should make decisions about
their health instead of their bosses, then you should sign our petition.
Businesses should not be allowed to make decisions about women’s health—that
should be up to a woman and her doctor.”
That kind of canned, potboiler response is to be expected
from the Democratic Party chairman. It is the key that fits the keyhole of a propaganda
effort from the national Democratic Party that hopes to make use of the court’s
decision to unhorse Republicans in the upcoming elections.
The court’s decision does not turn back the clock very far. It
was a Democratic president – the husband of prospective Democratic Party
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, former President Bill Clinton -- who
was the architect of the 1993 law known as the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act, voted into law with overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate. Mr.
Clinton’s bill sought to accommodate religious obligations. Ms. DiNardo has
abandoned that effort, but the Supreme Court in its most recent decision has
not. It probably is worth mentioning that Hobby Lobby sued and won its case
under the auspices of the Clinton bill, a datum that almost certainly will not
be mentioned by Mrs. Clinton on the campaign stump.
The Court’s present accommodation is narrow, from which, one
may assume, the justices were anxious to accommodate both parties to the suit.
And the ruling itself comes with an escape clause written by Justice Anthony
Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy wrote: “The accommodation works by requiring insurance
companies to cover, without cost sharing, contraception coverage for female
employees who wish it," an arrangement, he said, that "does not
impinge on the plaintiffs' religious beliefs."
In most cases, the Supreme Court ruling will not affect
decisions women make about contraception, but the notion that the court
decision is but one step in a conspiracy to rob women of their right to
contraception and abortion is a useful tool in political campaigns.
Just to begin with, the administrative mandate that forces
some religious people to violate Christian precepts does NOT apply to companies
that employ less than 50 people, an exception carved out in the Obama Care law
itself. If Ms. DiNardo truly was interested in extending what she supposes are
the benefits of tax funded birth control, including abortifacients, to the
majority of women deprived of such benefits by the Obama Care law, she would instantly
urge all Democrats in Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation
to craft and submit an amendment to the Obamacare bill that would extend the
benefits of the Kathrine Sebelius’ administrative mandate to all companies in the United States
that employ 50 people or less. But she won’t.
The court decision affects only certain kinds of birth
control, emergency contraceptives Plan B, Ella and two IUDs. Some religious
regard these forms of birth control as abortifacients. Even Hobby Lobby
presently provides birth control coverage to its employees; its owners object
in their suit only to emergency contraceptives such as the morning-after
pill and the week-after pill. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake cites a
Kaiser Family Foundation poll that found 85 percent of large employers offered
contraception coverage prior to the administrative interpretation issued by
former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that required some religious to violate their
religiously informed consciences. The Sebelius Rule was not part of the
original Obamacare legislation.
The borders erected by the high court are not easily surmounted.
Condemning the court ruling as discriminatory and “deeply disappointing,” President
of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund Cecile Richards took much of the
rhetorical sting out of the coming political assault on Republicans when she
acknowledged that most employees receiving contraceptive coverage through the
Affordable Health Care mandate will still be able to do so.
Both Connecticut U. S. Senators, neither of whom are willing
to let a largely manufactured crisis go to waste, are using the high court decision
to generate campaign funds. Mr. Blumenthal, who as Connecticut’s Attorney General
spent more than 20 years arguing cases in court, appears purposely to have misunderstood
the ruling, mostly for political purposes. Mr. Blumenthal -- whose chief of
staff, Laurie Rubiner, is former vice president for public policy and
advocacy for Planned Parenthood Federation of America – implored potential political
contributors “to add your name now to stand for women’s right to access to comprehensive
health care… The Supreme Court's decision in the Hobby Lobby case dealt a
crushing blow to individual rights to privacy by ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby
and allowing some corporate bosses to deny women access to contraception based
solely on their own beliefs.”
Mr. Murphy’s plea for campaign cash was similar. But the bid
for cash by Mr. Blumenthal, the fourth richest Senator in the U.S. Congress, is
the more shameless: Mr. Blumenthal has himself argued cases before the U.S. Supreme
Court, and he knows very well that the high court is not inclined in its
rulings to support those Republican Party causes that no doubt offend the
delicate sensibilities of both himself and his chief of staff. It is worth pointing
out that Ms. Sebelius, by inserting into the Obamacare law an administrative
ruling that does not appear in the Obamacare legislation, acrobatically leapt
over both the U.S. Senate and the House, sparing Senators like Mr. Blumenthal
the agony of voting in favor of a measure they heartily approve in their communications
to their political contributors.
Comments
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Actually, now that you mention it, I don't believe in "progress" for women. Women organized as a counter-cultural egalitarian pressure group are contemptible. Further, the progress that has been achieved since the sexual revolution and the placing of the female class under "civil rights" protection cannot be fairly characterized as an unalloyed increase in happiness, either for the gynos or for society as a whole.
But, as to the involvement of employers in the health insurance of employees, Ms. Party Hack-ette is absolutely correct. The reason they are is yet another function of federal power-grabbing social engineering. To wit; wwii wage controls were circumvented by provision of "benefits" which, after the war, labor unions prevailed on the feds to treat for tax purposes as non-income.
It is plainly in several ways a violation of the U.S. Constitution and its Amendments for the Federal government to require any individual or corporate entity to purchase health insurance, let alone "insurance" for the medical condition of pregnancy.