Noah Rothman:
I imagine the horrified shrieks that rose from the streets outside the Supreme Court on Monday as the decision in the Hobby Lobby case began to filter out into the crowd of liberal observers was reminiscent of those poor souls who watched helplessly as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire claimed the lives of 146 young, female garment workers.
In fact, the similarities are eerie. It seems that liberal commentators have convinced themselves that, just as was the case in 1911, the courts and the country have deemed women to be of lesser value than their male counterparts. The distinction between these two eras, of course, is that while that argument could be supported in 1911, it exists only in the heads of progressives in 2014.
NBC News journalist Pete Williams, an accomplished reporter who is not prone to indulge in speculation, went out of his way to insist repeatedly that the Court’s decision in this case was a narrow one. He noted that the decision extends only to the specific religious objections a handful of employers raised about providing abortifacients (as opposed to contraceptives). Williams added that Justice Anthony Kennedy allowed in his concurring opinion that the federal government can pay for and provide that coverage if employers would not.
The Federalist published a variety of other observations about this ruling which indicate that it was narrowly tailored to this specific case. The Court ruled that Hobby Lobby and other employers could not simply drop health coverage in order to avoid mandates. This decision does not apply to other government mandates like those requiring employers cover vaccinations. Finally, if the will of the public in the form of an electoral mandate creates a groundswell of support for a government-funded program which provides access to abortifacients, then that would be perfectly constitutional.
Williams’ MSNBC colleagues nodded along and, when asked for their contribution, proceeded to display none of this NBC reporter’s caution.
“I think we’ve seen a real goal post-moving here,” MSNBC.com’s Irin Carmon said. “We may say it is a narrow ruling because Taco Bell and Wal-Mart can’t opt out, but it is still an enormous expansion of corporate rights and of the refusal from the laws that are passed to create benefits for everybody.”
“The larger doctrinal implication here is potentially significant,” MSNBC host Ari Melber agreed. “For the first time, the Court is going and taking the First Amendment rights that we’ve seen long established for certain corporate entities and extending them to the religious idea.”
“Just because it was only restricted to women’s health access doesn’t mean that it doesn’t create a devastating precedent which says that women’s health care should be treated differently,” Carmon added. She added that the Republican Party is the biggest beneficiary of today’s ruling. “So, the context of this is an all-out assault on access to contraception and access to other reproductive health care services.”
Pure leftist insanity.
Nothing prevents people who want abortificients from buying these drugs themselves. All this ruling says is that someone with religious principles cannot be forced by obamacare to violate their principles by forcing them to pay for someone else to get these drugs.
By abortifacients, you actually mean the most commonly used forms of birth control. The phrase “as opposed to contraceptives” deliberately glosses over the fact that the decision doesn’t just affect things like RU-486. It will also likely affect birth control pills.
@Greg: When the employees of Hobby Lobby hired on, they knew what kind of insurance they had; that abortions and their derivatives were NOT part of the coverage. They have lost nothing.
This is the result of a stupid government sticking its nose where it does not belong.
I suppose if the company were bought out by Jehovah’s Witnesses, it would be perfectly OK for them to restrict employee health insurance coverage so that it wouldn’t cover the cost of life saving blood transfusions, or wouldn’t pay for children’s routine vaccinations.
What’s next? Maybe the company can make sure employee health insurance won’t cover the cost of an emergency abortion required to save the life of the woman who is in medical need of it. Such circumstances are rare, but they do happen.
Employees have rights, the same as their employers. Those relating to their health and personal decisions that don’t affect their job performance are none of their employee’s business. Democratic policies preserve individual choice.
Continue to go against that principle, and see what American women do when they get to the ballot boxes. And don’t think democrats won’t remind them.
@Greg:
A job is nothing more than a contract between and individual and the company. They request a job, the company makes an offer for salary, and benefits, and the individual can agree to the salary and benefits, or they can seek employment elsewhere. It is just that simple.
But the employee has no right to dictate to the employer what salary and benefits they will be offered.
If, when seeking a job at any company, be it Hobby Lobby or any other firm, no one is required to accept the offer Hobby Lobby makes.
@Greg:
You are demonstrating the leftist penchant for forcing people to pay for things that violate their principles. If you demand an employer pay for things that violate their religious principles you are insisting on a right that firstly doesn’t pass constitutional muster, and secondly inverts the employer-employee relationship. You sound like you believe that no company other than Hobby Lobby exists, and that employers exist solely to serve the whims of employees.
In 19 years of medicine and literally being involved in the care of over 2500 babies a year – attending roughly 10% of that number each year at delivery, there has NEVER been a case where an abortion was necessary to save a woman’s life. Rare is an understatement. The only conceivable case is a woman being diagnosed with cancer requiring chemo if she were less than 22-23 weeks along, which is so beyond rare they don’t even teach about such cases in medical.school.
Not true and you know it, Greg.
We’ve discussed this on FA many times already.
Hobby Lobby already pays for several types of birth control. (More than 15 different ones)
Obama wants them to cover abortifactants, too. (Less than 5 different ones.)
And, what’s this about Jehovah’s Witnesses not allowing other people to get vaccinated?
This is from their own web site:
In other words, they don’t even prevent one of their own from getting vaccinated!
(When I was in LB I was neighbors with a JW family for almost 20 years and I learned a lot from them about such lies.)
Your country is falling apart right before your eyes while you jump up and down over this silly HL issue.
Unbelievable…
This is how compromise works with the left. Hobby Lobby already accepts 16 0f the 20 versions of birth control and covers it… but that’s not ENOUGH compromise for the left. The left feels compromise involves full surrender to what they feel is what should be important. It is never enough to accept limited use of birth control; one has to fully accept abortion for any reason all the way up to full term to satisfy their view of “compromise”.
The reaction of the left to this demonstrates that they are more interested in contentious political issues than actually compromising and solving problem. They characterize giving up 4 of 20 forms of birth control to only some business owners as a “war on women” and hype up the rhetoric (again) to fever-pitched levels. Liberals don’t want compromise or solutions… they want control.
@Greg: I hope your correct!! Every abortion prevented is a life saved!! Any proof yet Greggie??
@Nanny G: Well said Nanny!! Greggie is as all liberals, tolerant unless your point of view is not along the liberal wacho line!! With people like him it’s all or nothing!! Same will be true with immigration reform. Unless immigration reform includes amnesty for millions vs immigration reform the same mantra will be heard!! Hope your well,
As the left gets their Hanes all in a wad claiming that the Hobby Lobby ruling will prevent women from obtaining contraceptives because of “evil Christianity”, let’s look at what Hobby Lobby’s insurance plan does cover, free of charge to its employees:
1.Male condoms
2.Female condoms
3.Diaphragms with spermicide
4.Sponges with spermicide
5.Cervical caps with spermicide
6.Spermicide alone
7.Birth-control pills with estrogen and progestin (“Combined Pill)
8.Birth-control pills with progestin alone (“The Mini Pill)
9.Birth control pills (extended/continuous use)
10.Contraceptive patches
11.Contraceptive rings
12.Progestin injections
13.Implantable rods
14.Vasectomies
15.Female sterilization surgeries
16.Female sterilization implants
Perhaps Hobby Lobby could include these subjects in their classes when they hire someone:
The Benefit Of Personal Responsibility
The Long Term Benefits of Wise Decisions
How To Apply For a Job With A Corporation That Supports Abortion
HIV/AIDS Cannot Be Aborted
I’m guessing that if the right manages to deep six Obamacare, it will create so much confusion in the health care system and the consumer marketplace that widespread support for a national single payer program will soon follow. They’re determined to break something that’s beginning to work, but they’ve really given very little thought to what to replace it with.
@Greg:
I hope the ‘murder a baby’ abortion pills aren’t really the most commonly used forms of birth control. I would think birth control pills, condoms, abstinence would rank above the ‘murder a baby’ pills in how often they are used.
@Greg: 4
Then you would be supposing incorrectly. Hobby Lobby was in existence when these persons were hired and hasn’t changed ownership to someone with ‘different religious’ outlooks, so their beliefs haven’t changed and the employees are now being asked to accomodate ‘new owners’. Remember the Court ruling was rather narrow in that it was restricted to just a narrow type of owner run business, not to major stock holder owned corporations. Stop making a mountain out of a mole hill.
@Greg:
You keep deluding yourself, Greg. Obamacare is not working in any fashion, other than to burden the economy and restrict access to actual medical care while causing more rapid increases in health care costs than were occuring before this socialist scam was crammed down our throats on a purely partisan vote over cheap parlimentary bait-and-switch tactics.
You argue from a false position, assuming as all leftist zealots do, that your ideological position is the only one worth acknowledging – based on a twisted concept of morality and fairness that cannot possibly hold up in any context of reality.
http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/13/john-stossel-improving-health-care/
When someone else pays for your health care, that someone else also decides when to pull the plug. The reason can be found in Econ 101. Medical care doesn’t grow on trees. It must be produced by human and physical capital, and those resources are limited. Politicians can’t repeal supply and demand.
@Greg: No doubt that to clean up the huge mess created by this ill-conceived, poorly executed and overall disastrous mistake known forever as Obamacare, there will be chaos. Just as it will be painful as we clean up all the other messes Obama leaves behind. But, thanks to his incompetence, it must be done.
Obamacare only exists because of the plethora of serious problems that it attempts to correct. Had there been no serious systemic problems affecting millions of Americans, it would never have gotten off the ground to begin with. Those problems are part of the reason that Barack Obama was elected.
@Greg:
If you read the Federalist Papers, the Constitution was never designed to cure all the ills of the human condition. What it did allow was for those humans to be able to strive to cure their own ills (as in poverty, shelter, food, medical care).
What you want, as a Socialist, Greggie, is a nanny state that takes care of all your problems for you so that you don’t have to do it yourself. That has been tried before. Perhaps you can tell us what nation it has worked in.
Some people interpret the general welfare clause more broadly than others.
Nobody will ever cure all the ills of the human condition, but we can progress in that direction. What has been done so far—Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection, public education, etc— has been much to the benefit of the common man. People have better lives because of it, not lives of effortless leisure. If this somewhat hampers the efforts of some very wealthy people who would like to become wealthier still, I consider that an acceptable trade off.
@Greg:
Hogwash. 85% of Americans had health insurance, and obamacare was passed on a series of lies that included the ridiculous claims that if you were happy with your insurance and your doctor you could keep them, that the medical cost curve would bend downwards (despite clear history of every government socialist program always costing far more than projected), that the cost of insurance would go down for the average family of 4 by $2500/year, and that taxes would not be increased on anyone making less than $250,000 per year.
Why was it necessary to do anything to the I surance of the already 85% covered to cover the other 15%?
Why is it necessary to force people to pay for coverage they do not need (middle agers paying for maternity care, men paying for breast exams, women paying for prostate exams, drug recovery coverage for people who do not use illicit drugs) ?
If obamacare was going to be so gosh darned magnificent for the economy and businesses, why (unlawfully) delay the employer mandate beyond the 2014 elections?
If obamacare mandates aren’t negatively affecting employment, why did the US Treasury Dept try to force companies to sign statements that their employment decisions were not affected by obamacare requirents, under penalty of perjury?
Why did Obama and his acolytes insist that obamacare was not a tax prior to forcing passage, then argue in multiple court cases that it was constitutional as a tax?
Obamacare was touted as a means of decreasing abuse of ERs, yet hospitals have seen only increases in patient load for nonemergent issues since obamacare passed.
If obamacare is so affordable, why do so many people need taxpayer provided subsidies to cover the premiums? And for those who require subsidies, how are they supposed to pay the $5-$6000 annual deductible for their bronze plans?
Obamacare is built on a mountain of lies, and is unworkable. What solution do you propose to the problem of physicians refusing to accept obamacare patients because the reimbursements are too low to cover the cost to the physician for caring for the patient? Are you going to argue doctors be forced to see such patients as a condition of being granted a medical license? Or are you going to argue for even more tax increases to raise obamacare reimbursements just high enough to cover the cost to physicians for seeing these patients?
@Greg:
Broadly interpreting the general welfare clause does not mean twisting or rewriting it. If the Founder’s interpretation of the general welfare clause matched your leftist cradle to grave, federal Sugar Daddy view, then why didn’t they enact collectivist tax scams and socialist welfare programs at the dawn of our country? Do you think there were no poor people in 1791 America? Promoting the general welfare was never meant to justify forcing people to give up their hard earned income so some collectivist politician could buy the votes of the uneducated and unindustrious with government handouts.
Since Carter forced the Dept of Education upon us in the 70s, what has been the result vis a vis US education/graduation results? Social Security is nothing more than a giant federal ponzi scam – illegal if anyone else were to try such a system – that is teetering on bankruptcy. Welfare has not decreased poverty and in fact more people are on foodstamps in the US than the entire population of Spain. Medicare costs have skyrocketed well beyond what leftists predicted in the 60s, yet the cost of health care has not come down. Our national debt is now higher than our annual GDP, attaining that level under Obama. You cannot show a single instance of any leftist welfare program that has done what was claimed would be done, or that cost what proponents projected at the time of passage.
@Greg:
Yes, the left seems to think that it applies only to those who can turn out the votes for them. But if you bothered to research the Constitution, you would have learned that the term “general” meant “inclusive”. i.e. A strong federal military protects ALL citizens equally. It does not protect some, while not protecting others.
And you find where the Federal government has the authority to do that in what part of the U.S. Constitution?
Tell me, Greggie, how will you know when we have progressed to the point where you progressives will be happy about the nation you live in?
I don”t see why the businesses should pay for contraceptives,
because their place is not providing SEX EXCHANGES,
so they are sure that no employee will become pregnant on their turf,
and far from it, THAT BUSINESS PROVIDE WORK ONLY, and that’s what they pay for,
so they are totaly removed from any sex subject, be it words or actions on their land,
they owe noting to their staff, noting related to sex,why the hell are businesses force to pay?
this is a gimmick, to suck the business of their money,
56 thousand jobs where open and gave to illegals and legal immigrants,
Since when? I could be wrong, don’t believe that Congress has at any time passed legislation requiring the taxpayers to pay for abortions.
Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 14, James Madison wrote:
Consider too the farewell address of our first President, George Washington, who, in reference to our constitution, warned,