Why Women Aren't People (But Corporations Are)

You mean the idea that every other west country have for the last few generations that there should be university access to health care?

Well we should indeed just go to a one payer system and nuts like you and the Hobby Lobby owners could not interfere with medical care,

The money to fund the care would just come out of taxes.

Are you aware of the advances Islam has made with the help of our courts. I am. You have a lot more to worry about than nuts like me.

My god you are to the far far right of even the fox network.

There is nothing far right about being aware.

Yes you should be aware of the terrorists hiding under your bed just as in the cold war period the evil communists was hiding under the same bed.

Communists did infiltrate our government. And are still doing it. Islam(terror) will be here and you won't be able to miss it.

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

The overblown, and in many instances dishonest, response to this decision by many liberals was not unexpected, and is not dissimilar to that which was engendered by the Harris v Quinn decision concerning Unions.

The facts behind the Burwell v Hobby Lobby decision are:

Hobby Lobby provided coverage for birth control prior to the Obamacare mandate that requires Health Insurance policies to provide coverage for all 20 contraceptives approved by the FDA. So right off the bat the argument that Hobby Lobby wants to deprive women of the means of contraception leaks like a sieve.

Hobby Lobby objected to four contraceptives, the use of which they believe kills a fertilized egg. Their objection is based on a belief that life begins with conception and that their faith proscribes the taking of innocent lives. Whether or not an argument can be made that one of the devices to which they objected doesn't operate to destroy a fertilized egg but to prevent fertilization from occurring is essentially meaningless. Unless the same can be argued about all four contraceptives, it doesn't warrant consideration… unless, of course, one is bound and determined to attack this decision from every possible angle. Not only have its critics done this, they made up a few angles as well.

The mere fact that Hobby Lobby did not object to all of the 20 contraceptives and was perfectly willing to cover 16, obliterates all hyperbolic claims that they are trying to deprive women with access to contraception. Case closed, end of story, fin.

But even, for the sake of argument, if this ridiculous assertion could get past the scope of Hobby Lobby's objection, it is disingenuous (as opposed to simply dishonest) to argue that non-coverage of contraception methods is tantamount to depriving women of access to them. The fact of the matter is that it does not, and in the case of most, if not all, of these methods, it can't even be argued that it deprives women of affordable access to contraception. There are numerous clinics around the country that provide contraceptives to women free of charge, and Wal-Mart sells a monthly supply of birth control pill for $10.00. The women who work at Hobby Lobby probably don't make huge salaries, but is anyone going to tell me that they think they can't afford $10.00 a month for contraceptives?

Keep in mind that this provision of Obamacare was not intended to solve a serious and pervasive problem of women's access to contraceptives. We're not discussing incredibly expense drugs and treatments as can be the case with certain illnesses and conditions. These are readily available and very affordable drugs and devices, irrespective of health insurance, and for those so destitute that they can't possibly afford even $10.00 a month there are government and private clinics that will dispense them free of charge.

Further, Hobby Lobby neither sought to nor did the decision strike down the Obamacare mandate concerning contraception. Not only can Hobby Lobby workers choose from 16 different contraceptives, and possibly avail themselves of free dispense by clinics, they can seek employment with another company that will cover all 20 contraceptives.

No matter how you look at it, Hobby Lobby being allowed to remove four of twenty contraceptives from coverage does not effectively prevent women who are not employed by them in any way, nor does it affect women who are employed by them or may someday be employed by them from accessing contraceptives. It also doesn’t place a meaningful burden on them in terms of accessing the four struck from coverage.

The next argument being raised in a hysterical manner has to do with whether whatever burden is placed on female employees of the company is "undue."

None of the dissenting justices questioned the sincerity of the defendant's religious beliefs. There was no suggestion that they wished to exclude the four contraceptives for any reason other than religious objection. They weren't trying to save themselves money, they didn't have investments in the other 16 contraceptive, or any other imaginable motive other than religious belief.

From what I have read thus far there also was no attempt by any of the justices to challenge the motivating religious belief either. This wasn't a "religious belief" that required employees to wear funny hats, or even one that might prompt a desire on the part of Hobby Lobby owners to eliminate coverage for blood transfusions or the like (as Hilary Clinton trying to ride the women-as-victims train to the White House suggested). This is not to pass judgment on the validity of the religious belief underpinning this case, but is to suggest that rhetoric about crazy religious fanatics is clearly overblown.

Whatever one's personal view of religion may be, another relevant fact is that our Constitution protects our right to religious beliefs, and this doesn't mean the right to simply think whatever we want as long as we keep it in our heads, or confine it to a building containing like-minded loons. It means the right to speak and act on the basis of our beliefs; in the course of our everyday lives --- including the companies we may own.

Despite Justice Ginsberg’s dire and hyperbolic dissent, this decision doesn’t open the door wide for companies to use religious beliefs as an excuse for any and all actions with employees. It’s a very narrow decision that is limited by certain specifics of the case. It only applies to “closely held” companies which is generally defined as one in which 5 or less individuals hold a controlling interest. While it’s true that something like 80% of all US companies fall into this category, a very large chunk of them have less than 50 employees and are exempt from Obamacare right off the start. It doesn’t include another large chunk that are limited partnerships or limited liability companies and there is no indication that the chunk remaining is filled to the brim with owners who wish to operate their businesses in close adherence to their religious beliefs. I heard someone on NPR this afternoon say that only 80 companies have registered complaints, based on religious beliefs, about Obamacare with the federal government. Even if this is off by a factor of 100, we are not talking about an enormous pool of possible affected workers. It is ridiculous to suggest that this decision will lead to end of the contraceptive mandate, and even more ridiculous that it could ever lead to the elimination of women’s access to the four or all twenty contraceptives.

And let’s consider the mandate itself. It was a solution looking for a problem. There wasn’t a contraceptive access or exploding population crisis before it was enacted, but even if we assume there was, why is mandating that employers pay for it in full through insurance plans without any charge to or financial participation by the employee the best way to address it? Why is the possibility that by doing so, some employers will be forced to act in discordance with their religious principles thought of, at best, as a mere trifle? The Hobby Lobby owners believe abortion is murder, but the hell with them. This question has already been decided by the critics of this decision: It’s not murder and if you think it is, tough. Your belief is stupid, antiquated, and oppressive. You don’t care about unborn children, you just want to control women’s reproductive organs!

Religious freedom is not only protected by the Constitution, the US Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 in a near unanimous vote (only three Senators voting against it) and President Clinton signed it into law. So even if some cockamamie argument is made about how the First Amendment of a Living Constitution is irrelevant in the year 2014, the principle was near unanimously confirmed in 1993 with a Democrat president signing on. This strong a commitment to freedom of religion has been swept aside by evolving societal mores in only 21 years?

The argument is made, with the support of Justice Ginsberg’s dissent that there is no limitation to the impact of this decision that thousands upon thousands of closely held companies will come out of the woodwork seeking to do all sorts of harm, including nullifying certain anti-discrimination laws on the basis, legitimate or otherwise, of the owners’ religious beliefs. I suppose they could try, but this decision isn’t going to enable them to succeed.

For Democrats and the left in particular, women’s reproductive rights have been raised to sacred status. Nothing but leaving them untouched or sacrosanct will be tolerated, and any and all laws, decisions or even opinions that seek to limit them in any way are immediately denounced as a heinous attempt to reduce women to breeding stock for privileged white capitalists, or the imposition of insane religious beliefs by theocratic fundamentalists. And, always as proof of the War on Women being waged by conservatives. I was wondering when they would declared that such efforts are evidence of bigotry and this time around feminists have. As usual the media has joined in on the avalanche of propaganda, and people who don’t want to bother to learn anything about this case listen to the shrill cacophony and conclude someone is trying to make women get pregnant when they don’t want to. Sadly it works.

The decision is clear the erosion of the right to religious freedom is too big a price to pay for absolute implementation of this mandate. If the government believes that providing women with free access to these four contraceptives is so critical to the welfare of women and the nation, it has within its power to easily arrange that they have it, without mandating that Americans violate their religious beliefs. As a matter of fact, the government doesn’t even have to create a system to provide these four contraceptive to women whose employers won’t pay for them, it only has to fill whatever gaps exist in the current, non-insurance related system, of free access.

Baldino at least stays relitively calm and actually backs his claims. coldfuck has loose wiring,

The problem with that thought is that legitimate medical procedures are not murder.

You sure have a fixation on Rex. Have you asked him out, yet? I think Rex has better taste than to be seen with you.

You mom was right: teeny tiny dick!

I think the girlyman threatened you!

Found in the Hobby Lobby’s scrapbooking kit (courtesy @themightylayman)


Slut-shaming for the righteous
Posted on Tuesday, July 1 at 5:12pm | By Mark Morford

I suppose the good news is, more women are flocking to the Democratic party than ever before.

I suppose the good news is, the vast majority of young people – who are, on the whole, always more progressive/less uptight than their elders – are completely repulsed, if not outright infuriated, by the fact that women’s rights are still under such antiquated duress, as exemplified by how any half-brained company that happens to be owned by fundamentalist zealots can now deny vital health benefits to women (and only to women, tellingly), simply because the owners have a pinched, regressive view of God.

Did you know the owners of Hobby Lobby – which, by the way, is one of the most depressing, third-rate retail dystopias you’ll ever visit and you should avoid their stores at all costs, now more than ever – did you know the owners, being evangelical billionaires, have spent hundreds of millions trying to turn the nation into a cluster of regressive, Bible-thumping literalist simpletons? True.

Did you know they have done this because, as history clearly shows, basing a nation’s core values on an childish reading of a tedious, violently outdated book written (and re-re-rewritten) by highly neurotic old men thousands of years ago has worked so well in the past? Also true.
Found in the Hobby Lobby's craft kit (courtesy @themightylayman)

Found in the Hobby Lobby’s scrapbooking kit (courtesy @themightylayman)

But never mind that now: The (potentially) good news is that sometimes, when a demoralizing shocker like the Hobby Lobby decision comes down the wire, the end result isn’t always what you think. Sometimes the end result can, in fact, turn toward a powerful positive, a potent boomerang counter-effect in exactly the right direction. You think?

But wait, let’s not be too quick to whistle past the cultural graveyard. It’s downright appalling to learn that, in 2014, five out of the nine wisest legal minds in the land wouldn’t laugh off a fundamentalist challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate as blatantly offensive to the integrity of the modern era.

The fact that we’re still stuck with this old, male SCOTUS majority telling us that extremist misreadings of the Bible trump modern science and basic women’s health (not to mention how birth control coverage is actually great for business), well, it makes every woman I know cringe in deep cervical pain.

But as Amanda Marcotte over at Slate smartly points out, the Hobby Lobby decision is likely a short-lived victory for the Christian Right. The extreme narrowness of the decision, which almost fetishistically focuses on sex (and which spawned a truly epic dissent from the awesome Ruth Bader Ginsberg), congeals the entirety of the Right’s ideology around a single, panicky obsession: sexually active females.

Oh, Christians. Still with the vagina obsession? Could you be more predictable?

Put another way, by expending so much effort attacking women WRT a very narrow slice of the Affordable Care Act, the entire fundamentalist movement becomes even more trite, shrill and historically irrelevant. You can bet on it.

Don’t believe me? Just observe how badly the Christian right lost the battle – and soon the war – over gay marriage, the defining cultural issue of the last 30 years, and perhaps the last core American civil liberty. The epic Prop 8 fight left the GOP’s extremist base tattered, fragmented, furious that their leaders failed to stomp out the evil “gay agenda” (AKA “love”).

To make amends and shore up the “angry bigot” vote, the GOP quickly made the (very bizarre) decision to jump back on the warpath against their once-timid old nemesis, an enemy that has now become, much to their confusion, the most potent foe imaginable: women.

Open threats to Planned Parenthood, forcing abortion clinics in numerous states to close, limiting access for the poor, forcing women in regressive (southern) states to go across state lines for abortion services, or resort to DIY abortions (already happening, in Texas)? The GOP has done it all. They’ve attacked Wendy Davis, savaged Hillary (eternally), mocked Sandra Fluke and openly hated upon, with all their might, Obama and his birth control mandate. Just for starters.

But here’s the bottom line: It’s a tactic, and a platform, that’s as hostile as it is doomed.

Really, how short is the GOP’s memory? How quickly did the right forget that it was women and minorities who put Obama in power – twice? How blind are they to the fact that it’s modern women who are rallying around Hillary (and Elizabeth Warren, et al) in record numbers? Or that it’s women who are surging in polls, in college degrees, in executive power and cultural movements?
The devil!

Buy a few boxes, send to area Hobby Lobby stores? Why not?

Perhaps most significantly of all, it’s women who are fighting back louder and better than ever against deeply sexist frat-bro culture, rape culture, the toxic stigma of slut-shaming. Note to conservatives and macho tech bros alike: If you didn’t take the #YesAllWomen phenomenon seriously, you get exactly what you deserve.

Let’s make one thing clear: It’s very likely the Hobby Lobby decision will cause an ugly rash of similar “privately held” companies to demand a bit of that ol’ Christian misogyny of their very own. Indeed, Mother Jones listed 71 companies who want similar birth control exceptions as Hobby Lobby. And it could get worse.

But imagine if a large private employer – IKEA or Walmart, say – were to declare a similar restriction on women’s health. My guess (hope?) is the public outcry would be deafening. I might be wrong, but I think most big-name companies would never risk the negative publicity, much less be dumb enough to declare that Jesus thinks women shouldn’t be having all that icky, irresponsible sex in the first place. In fact, most companies, if they value their future, are smart enough to go in the other direction, and more aggressively support women’s rights as a core business value.

Hence, the birth control mandate might remain restricted to small, backwater companies you’ve never heard of, as meanwhile women continue to take over and shift the cultural discussion entirely. And if Hillary (or similar) takes the Big Chair in 2016? What a delight to watch all the crusty males of the Supreme Court – and much of the fundamentalist GOP – whimper and shrivel into oblivion.

Hobby Lobby does invest in birth control
By Heather Long @byHeatherLong July 2, 2014: 11:10 AM ET

http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/01/investing/hobby-lobby-401k-contraception/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Hobby Lobby is a craft store chain that says it operates "in a manner consistent with Biblical principles." Those values extend throughout its business, except when it comes to the company's retirement plan.

The company refuses to cover contraception methods for its employees that it views as abortive such as Plan B and Ella. Hobby Lobby fought the Affordable Care Act's mandate that businesses pay for birth control all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and won this week.

"It's been a long journey, but an important one for our family and for those who wish to be guided in all areas of life, including their businesses by faith and conscience," Hobby Lobby co-founder Barbara Green said in a statement on YouTube after the ruling.

What the Hobby Lobby ruling means

Hobby Lobby's founders have made it clear that any abortion and certain contraceptives are unacceptable in their eyes, yet the company's 401(k) plan has millions of dollars invested in funds that own the companies that make birth control methods including Plan B, the so-called "morning after" drug.

Like many companies, Hobby Lobby offers its employees a 401(k) plan. Over 13,000 past and present employees have taken advantage of that plan, according to the latest documents filed with the Department of Labor.

Employees have the option to put their retirement dollars -- and the money that Hobby Lobby contributes on their behalf -- into over a dozen different mutual funds.

At least eight of those funds have been invested in companies that produce contraceptives such as Teva Pharmaceutical (TEVA), Bayer (BAYRY), and Pfizer (PFE), according to a CNNMoney analysis. Teva makes Plan B. At least one fund also held Forest Laboratories, which makes a drug that is used to induce abortions.

Hobby Lobby ruling won't affect many small business

These are huge drug companies that make many different medications. Contraceptives are only part of the mix, and the investment funds have very small stakes in these pharmaceutical firms overall.

Hobby Lobby has not responded to CNN requests for comment about its retirement plan. Mother Jones broke the story about the company's 401(k) plan in April.

How Hobby Lobby can avoid investing in birth control: There are ways Hobby Lobby could strip out investments dealing with contraceptives.

For example, an investment management firm called Ave Maria Funds offers a "Catholic Values" fund that "screens out two major categories of companies: those involved with abortion and those judged to be anti-family, such as companies which distribute pornographic materials or whose policies undermine the Sacrament of Marriage."

Related: Hottest stock markets in the world

The most recent information available on Hobby Lobby's retirement funds comes from a 2012 filing with the Department of Labor. At that time, Hobby Lobby used American Funds, T. Rowe Price and Vanguard to manage its money.

Another option for the company would be to ask its providers such as Vanguard to create a custom portfolio, sometimes dubbed a "separately managed account." This would essentially put Hobby Lobby's funds into their own bucket and give the company more control to forbid investments in firms like Teva.

That said, any time you ask for something special, it often costs more.

"While it would be possible to create some kind of custom portfolio, I don't know that that would be feasible in 401(k)-type account given the costs involved. It's probably doable, but expensive," says David Blanchett, the head of retirement research for Morningstar Investment Management.

Figuring out what companies are acceptable and which ones are not is also tricky. Most of the funds Hobby Lobby offers employees are "actively managed," meaning someone is picking stocks and likely moving them in and out of the portfolio regularly.

While Teva and Pfizer might be off-limits, what about a company like Aetna (AET)that is a health care insurer, but puts Plan B on its preferred drug list?
First Published: July 1, 2014: 3:16 PM ET

So what? You and the liberal pinheads are sore losers.

Kermit Gonsell.

So does that mean a company can offer medical insurance but the insurance doesn't pay for anything. The insurance would be fairly cheap and the company could claim they are complying with the law under your scenario.