The Obama administration is asking for comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid about regulations on reproductive healthcare after the Hobby Lobby decision. Tomorrow is the deadline to submit your comment.
From the National Partnership for Women and Families:
While Congress ultimately needs to pass the Not My Boss’ Business Act to fix the Supreme Court's disastrous Hobby Lobby ruling, we can do our part today by supporting the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent bosses from denying women access to contraception without copays.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has asked the public to provide feedback on its proposed rules that would help ensure that women have birth control coverage regardless of their bosses’ beliefs.
That's where you come in. Please take a minute and send a message to HHS about why bosses have no business in our business. Below are some talking points to get you started.
Extremists are still trying to undermine and take away women’s health coverage, so we need to make sure our voices are heard.
Please submit a message today supporting the administration’s efforts to ensure that women have coverage for the full range of contraceptive methods without copays, no matter where they work.
The deadline is tomorrow, October 21 at 5:00 p.m. ET.
Submit your message using Regulations.gov right now, before it's too late.
Below is a copy of the comment I submitted.
The Hobby Lobby decision was a terrible one. Essentially, it said that my employer had a right to interfere in my relationship with my doctor and our decisions about a vital aspect of my health. And why? Because a profit-making corporation claimed that in order to satisfy it's religious beliefs, it had the right to interfere with mine.
Even without questioning whether a corporation that employs tens of thousands of people is capable of religious beliefs, this is impossible. Do you want your employer to catechize you or your wife or sister or mother or daughter? Does your boss have the right to insist that you attend a particular church, and know why you are absent when you miss a service? Does your boss have the right to check your medical records without your permission, or ask your significant other how often you have sex?
The Hobby Lobby decision allows a woman's boss to do something quite close to these things.
Reproductive health is a major part of women's health, and decisions about it are personal and medically important, affecting our physical and emotional well-being. An employer has no place in such intimate decisions, whether they concern the use of birth control in general or the method chosen.
The Affordable Healthcare Act recognizes that reproductive healthcare is a major part of women's health needs for most of their lives, and that it should have the same status as an annual physical and routine tests for certain cancers and other illnesses and be made available without co-pays. For-profit corporations have no right to interfere in such an intimate part of their employees' lives. Ever.
Thanks for your attention.
You can submit your comment here:
http://www.regulations.gov/...