After yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling in the matter of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., wherein the highest court in the land decided 5-4 that “closely held” for-profit corporations have a right to religiously object to government regulations (because Corporations Are People Too) with regard to the “contraceptive mandate” of the Affordable Care Act, it all really came down to conception and the process of.
More to the point, it came down to what the plaintiffs believe to be the act of conception. This case was really about contraceptives that prevent an egg from being implanted in a woman’s uterus. For the plaintiffs in Hobby Lobby, they define conception as the point when the sperm and egg come together to make a zygote, which for them makes morning-after pills and IUDs problematic since there is a closely held belief among Conservatives that both terminate an existing pregnancy. THIS is what they believe is tantamount to an abortion. This is also wrong and wholly different from reality in which these contraceptives work to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus. In the plainest terms we can muster, these contraceptives ARE NOT abortifacients that remove an embryo by use of a chemical or manual process of elimination.
As reported by, RH Reality Check on the subject:
“The definition [of the beginning of pregnancy] is critical to distinguishing between a contraceptive that prevents pregnancy and an abortifacient that terminates it,” writes Rachel Benson Gold of the Guttmacher Institute.
“[O]n the… question of when a woman is considered pregnant, the medical community has long been clear: Pregnancy is established when a fertilized egg has been implanted in the wall of a woman’s uterus. And on this point, federal policy has long been both consistent and in accord with the scientists: Drugs and devices that act before implantation prevent, rather than terminate, pregnancy.”
It is the mere suggestion that one of these contraceptives could prohibit implantation of a coalition of cells from attaching is the basis for Hobby Lobby’s objection amid the singing Conservative chorus who believe the same ideology — falsely.
There are a variety of things these contraceptives may do, including:
- delaying or inhibiting ovulation (release of an egg)
- affecting the movement of egg or sperm (making them less likely to meet)
- directly or indirectly, have effects on the endometrium [the lining of the uterus] that might prevent implantation of a fertilized ovum, but it is unknowable the regularity of this occurence
All of which have nothing to do with the happenings that occur once an egg has attached itself to the uterus wherein pregnancy begins. However, for Conservatives, to suggest that one of these methods of prevention may stop the God-directed destiny of one of these tiny bunches of cells from forming an individual is enough to take the argument to the courts. And like always, lost in the debate of the “conception” process and identifying when personhood begins, is how these views totally disregard the wishes of the women at the center of it all. In Justice Ginsburg’s Hobby Lobby dissent she says:
In a decision of startling breadth, the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs….] The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would…deny legions of women who do not hold their employers’ beliefs access to contraceptive coverage…
That’s exactly right. So what does it matter that the company believes that conception begins when sperm meets egg, or when lips come together in a chaste kiss, or whenever they deem conception begins — when you’ve just said to women who may believe none of the above, that they can’t decide what type of contraception they’d like to use? What about their rights not to have to abide by your religious mandates? Just as you, Hobby Lobby, don’t want ACA to mandate what you may do with how you provide medical coverage, so do you infringe on the rights of women in your company who should be able to make their own healthcare decisions — even if they don’t coincide with your moral findings. Are you also willing to deny coverage to smokers or anyone else whose personal choices you deem in contradiction to your standards; the overweight diabetic, the HIV patient, the opiate-addicted newborn? That’s the thing with turning a corporation into a person by cloaking a set of personal views under the guise of corporate will — you forget that these decisions actually impact real living people — and not just those cheerleading from the sidelines or the Tea Party pulpit.
So we have to ask ourselves, is everything up for debate? No? Well, once we’ve opened that door, it’s hard to know how deeply down the rabbit hole we’ll go when it comes to using our ideology to frame an argument against personal health choice and basic healthcare.
If we were to throw the shoe on the other foot, could an employer, say an organization that assists victims of domestic or sexual violence, decide that they won’t cover Viagra or any of the erectile dysfunction medications by claiming that this particular sex organ is a “weapon” with the ideology of their organization being that it is not within their moral compass to pay for the potential “weaponizing” of the male sex member? Could or should a group take this to the Supreme Court and push this into relevance based upon a strongly-held, but scientifically laughable belief which ignores or misinterprets how the medication is used and its intent? Based on yesterday’s ruling? Absolutely.
Image Source: Wikimedia
