Let me begin by saying that I do not work for an organization that opposes contraception, nor do I personally lack health care coverage.
I’m speaking out now on behalf of other American women, against arguments from religious zealots who once again want to threaten the right of adult females in our supposedly free country to have no-cost access to contraception as part of their health insurance.
That such nonsense is before the Supreme Court once again is an affront to the many more important issues that the high court could be hearing right now—especially when the chance of resolving it this time around is unlikely given the 4-4 partisan divide that will result now that Justice Scalia has gone to his final reward. (A fact that is indeed a blessing for American women.)
The GOP’s refusal to even consider his replacement at this time also means that the court will surely remain divided for the foreseeable future. So, hearing the argument again (same song as Hobby Lobby, but in a different key) is simply a waste of the court’s time.
But there’s a more important issue at stake than just ill-advised and wasteful nuisance suits: fundamentalist religion’s intrusion into the health care benefits of adults who are not willing adherents amounts to financial rape, and such things have no place in 21st Century America.
Seeking employment at, for example, a store like Hobby Lobby (which is owned by evangelical Christians), or a nursing home operated by a branch of the Catholic Church, does not require that one join that employer’s religion. (Requiring someone to practice a religion, last I heard, could not legally be defended as a condition of employment unless one was actually joining the clergy.)
When Hobby Lobby filed their “religious freedom” suit opposing free contraceptive coverage mandated by the ACA a couple of years back, it seemed that the issue was about money. That almost made sense as an argument as most employers do pay for a portion of employee health plans and everything costs money, including zero co-pay prescriptions.
But now that the government has issued a “no problem, if you don’t want to cover it we will, just fill out some forms” workaround, and conservative employers are STILL fighting coverage on “religious grounds,” it is apparent that that this issue has little to do with money or religion, but in fact is all about control over the reproductive systems of adult women.
I’d even almost buy into the argument (however disingenuous) that an employer with a “strong moral objection” shouldn’t have to be “complicit” in helping provide “sinful” contraception because women already have access to it through free clinics and/or ACA created state insurance exchanges—IF—these same religious folk weren’t simultaneously working nonstop to shut down every Planned Parenthood clinic in the country, petitioning Washington to overturn the ACA (and state exchanges) and hammering Republican Governors to refuse Medicaid funds.
The net result of success in any one of these endeavors would be to prevent—for many American women—access to any reproductive options beyond abstinence or childbirth.
If we examine the many laws religious conservatives seek to impose—and the actions they are taking—it’s pretty clear that the ultimate goal is control over women’s bodies by whatever means possible.
Put simply, they yearn for a return to the time before Margaret Sanger taught women where babies came from and how to decide for themselves when to have them. This is not only ridiculous and wrong, but in 2016 America, it’s illegal.
So to all you religious men seeking dominion over the nation’s uteri, consider this: you have no business inside a woman’s body unless you’ve been invited. Inserting yourself in our lady parts without our consent has a name—and it’s neither pretty, nor Godly.
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