The 88 Percent: The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision threatens all contraception

[niyad]

The 88 Percent

The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision threatens all contraception



By SARAH R. BOONIN

WHEN THE U.S. SUPREME COURT RULED 5-4 THIS PAST SUMMER IN THE CASE OF BURWELL v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the court’s majority tried to cast it as a decision about “religious freedom.” That’s because it allowed closely held corporations with religious objections to certain types of birth control to escape the mandate of the Affordable Care Act to provide contraceptive coverage to its employees.
Commentators widely condemned the “breathtakingly broad” scope of the 5-4 opinion in Hobby Lobby, and many bemoaned the court’s further personification of corporations as having religious faith. But a closer look at Hobby Lobby reveals a far broader and deeper threat to women’s reproductive health than most realize. Perhaps that is because the court’s majority virtually erased women from the pages of its opinion, even though it was about our lives.

Any study of U.S. reproductive-health law should begin with the case of Griswold v. Connecticut. Written almost 50 years ago, Griswold held that the constitutional right to privacy includes the right of married couples to make personal decisions about using contraceptives. It ushered in a new era of women’s control over their bodies and transformed women’s ability to participate more equally in nondomestic spheres.
Since Griswold, the right to contraception has served as the foundation for the court’s treatment of women’s reproductive health. It laid the legal groundwork for a broad range of sexual and reproductive freedoms, including the right to abortion, the decriminalization of same-sex intimacy and, most recently, the right to same-sex marriage. Yet a majority of the court in Hobby Lobby displayed an utter disregard for Griswold and women’s access to contraception.

. . .

Perhaps the most glaring example of the opinion’s indifference to women’s reproductive interests came as the majority considered whether the government had a “compelling interest” in mandating contraceptive coverage. Almost as an aside, the majority declared the government’s justifications for the mandate—including public health and gender equality—to be too “broad” and “unfocused.” But how are public health and gender equality any broader than the “sincerely held religious beliefs” that carried the day? Without deciding the issue of compelling interest, the majority grudgingly assumed the government’s interests were sufficient— but then they ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby on other grounds.

To be clear: A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court refused to make a definitive decision on whether or not the government has compelling reasons for ensuring women’s access to contraception. Even Justice Anthony Kennedy was disturbed by this and wrote separately to clarify, among other things, that the contraceptive mandate furthers “a legitimate and compelling interest in the health of female employees.”

. . . .



http://www.msmagazine.com/fall2014/88-percent.asp

[SheilaT]

1. What worries me most here is that younger people,

by which I mean anyone under the age of 40, and more like 50, really don't understand what's at stake.

Roe v Wade happened in 1973. So if you were born after 1963 you might not really remember that at all.

For all you young'uns, let me tell you what it was like back then. First off, anything remotely like birth control was difficult to obtain. If you were a woman and wanted The Pill, you had to run the gauntlet of a male doctor who had complete control over whether or not to prescribe it to you. As a male, buying condoms was sometimes easy, often not.

Unwanted pregnancies happen, even in the best of advanced planning. Since only women get pregnant, it is ultimately up to them whether or not to continue with the pregnancy. I can easily recall many of the so-called home remedies. None of which were reliably effective, I might add. There was always a sort of underground network of where to go to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. Some of those were reliable in the sense that you could get it taken care of, and some weren't.

I'm thinking of a teenage girl I knew who was raped an got pregnant as a result (despite the idiotic claims it can't happen) whose family had the wherewithal to get her to Hawaii, where abortion was legal at the time. I'm thinking of more than one young woman I worked with, who got pregnant, despite using birth control, but were in no position to have or raise a baby, and in any case the man who was the father wasn't going to help out.

I think what angers me the most is in the last sentence above. The men involved almost never take any kind of responsibility. They put their pants back on and they're gone. They don't get pregnant. They have absolutely no idea what it's really about, the bodily changes, the hormonal things. They just walk away. And yet it's almost exclusively men who make decisions about what women can do with their bodies. If I were in charge, oh if I were in charge I'd make men have a mandatory 72 hour waiting period for sex, and even then have to listen to a lecture about the terrible dangers of having sex, of graphic photos of venereal disease. I'd make them have to undergo humiliating exams, intrusive questions into their personal lives, having to put their own lives on hold while they raise children. In short, I'd make them responsible in the ways women are always responsible, and then ask, How do you like this?

[niyad]

2. thank you for your post. so many young people have no idea what it was like in the bad old days.

[niyad]

3. . . .

[beam me up scottie]

4. He who controls the womb contols the universe.

I can't believe that we're still fighting for access to contraceptives in 2014.

Birth control should be free and available to all, until it is there is no such thing as equal rights.

[niyad]

5. YES!!!!!!