I don't know how explicitly I can say this as we all go around and around stating "well, it's a narrow ruling" and "well, they sincerely believed it."
No.
Goddamnit.
They fucking lied.
You can say it.
Hobby Lobby LIED about the science of birth control and won.
Mother Jones:
Yet this scientific determination did not guide the five justices. In his opinion, Alito contends that these four contraception methods "may have the effect of preventing an already fertilized egg from developing any further by inhibiting its attachment to the uterus." He does not cite any science to back this up. Instead, in a footnote, Alito concedes that Hobby Lobby's religious-based assertions are contradicted by science-based federal regulations: "The owners of the companies involved in these cases and others who believe that life begins at conception regard these four methods as causing abortions, but federal regulations, which define pregnancy as beginning at implantation, do not so classify them."
and:
The company argues that emergency contraception pills, such as Ella and Plan B, destroy fertilized eggs by interfering with implantation in the uterus. Hobby Lobby's owners consider this abortion. But the pills don't work that way. When Plan B first came on the market in 1999, its mechanism for preventing unplanned pregnancies wasn't entirely clear. That's why the FDA-approved labeling reflected some uncertainty and said that the pills "theoretically" prevent pregnancy by interfering with implantation. Since then, though, there has been a lot of research on how these pills work, and the findings are definitive: They prevent pregnancy by blocking ovulation. In fact, they don't work once ovulation has occurred. [University of Miami law school professor Caroline Mala ] Corbin recently wrote in a law review article, "Every reputable scientific study to examine Plan B's mechanism has concluded that these pills prevent fertilization from occurring in the first place…In short, Plan B is contraception."
Labels on these products have been updated in Europe to reflect the science, and the Catholic Church in Germany dropped its opposition to local Catholic hospitals providing emergency contraception to rape victims after reviewing the evidence. The science is so clear, in fact, that even Dennis Miller, an abortion foe and director of the bioethics center at the Christian Cedarville University, concluded that emergency contraception drugs don't cause abortions. Last year, he told Christianity Today. "[O]ur claims of conscience should be based on scientific fact, and we should be willing to change our claims if the facts change." (IUDs generally work like spermicide, preventing conception.)
Yet the Becket Fund's Windham insists that the question of the science is not before the court. So basically, the Hobby Lobby case requires the court to decide whether a corporation has sincere religious beliefs that would be compromised by having its health plan cover the contraception that it once covered because it believes that contraception causes abortions, even when it doesn't. Got that?
Hobby Lobby
sincerely believes life begins at the very exact point sperm and egg meet never mind the
FIFTY PERCENT implantation failure rate, which they ignore or just say is "natural". I'm almost wililng to accept that they don't know this, or
even how the process of a fertlized egg implanting into the uterine wall (assuming it isn't expelled) works because this commonly isn't covered in reproductive education. I didn't get it until university, and I live in a state that had then and still does have fairly comprehensive reproductive education.
Or they don't sincerely believe and they do know all of this, since Hobby Lobby once covered the four birth control methods they now no longer have to because they sincerely believe. Amazing how sincerely held beliefs can evolve with a sudden quickness. Imagine that.
Birth control doesn't cause abortion. That is not how it works, but don't expect liars to care. Hobby Lobby lied. They lied so much that they're investing in birth control companies.
Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).
Of course liars would be hypocrites too. That's the thing about this particular cultural tribe.
They lie. It is a bedrock cornerstone of their entire belief system. Not Jesus.
Lying. Their chief historian, David Barton? He's a liar,
so good he is at lying that you can't ever tell when he's telling the truth. If David Barton's blinking? He's lying. If he's even breathing, he's lying. Focus on the Family? They're liars. Creationists? Active liars. They
successfully changed The Bible so they could lie about abortion.
They lie. And they'll
probably do the same process with The Bible again, now that they've got another lie in the legal record.
And never mind that Hobby Lobby's owners have stated they want a public school Bible course, based on their version of course, and certainly NOT as literature. After all, remember our definitions!
This ruling was based on an orchestrated litany of lies, couched in "belief," bought forth by people who are expert in lying. I've said continually for some time now that this country has culturally, for almost its entire history, privileged "I believe" over "I think." This is indeed a problem, especially now that there's a religio-political movement that's become expert at lying, a movement which has segments that explictly want a theocracy in this country. Some of them are willing to lie to get there. That their lies are effective in the courts is disturbing.