House Votes to Allow D.C. Employers to Fire Women for Using Birth Control

originally posted by: dawnstar
a reply to: pfishy
and you seem to be casting a very narrow net.

some companies might make exceptions in some cases. but are all the companies making exceptions for all the instances when an unplanned pregnancy can cause extreme medical problems for the mother? I highly doubt it! and why on earth should any women have to go through that kind of invasion of privacy to prove that her health would be endangered? We don't make the patients that are on pain medications go through such invasion do we? how about those that are on anti-depressants? just because they are a little depressed, do they really need that medication, will they die without it?

Why do assume that these companies would exclude medical care for a pregnancy which endangers the mother? Even the most conservative states allow abortions for cases where the life of the mother is at risk.
So, I just put forth a simple explanation of how insurance policies work, and what the law actually states, and you jump straight to a nice extreme example. I didn't even try to justify the companies' position on birth control. Nor would I. There's really no point in coming at me with that kind of thing

originally posted by: boymonkey74
a reply to: mOjOm

A healthy sex life all helps for a healthy mind....I suppose that is why I'm bat #e crazy because of the lack of it

I would agree with you there also. My post which you responded to was pointing out that Healthcare covers medication and devices for Erectile Dysfunction and nobody is complaining about those and yet they're complaining about Birth Control.

Now, when viewed with what you just said above and healthy sex life is important that should apply across the board, yes??? So it makes sense why having Healthcare for men to get boners is good. But that would also mean having Healthcare for Women's Birth Control is good also. So why all the fuss only about women's BC and not men's Boner aides???

a reply to: WeAreAWAKE

Ok, your post seemed like nothing more than wild accusations and you trying to put words in my mouth so let me just state what it is that I think and why so we can alleviate any confusion here about what my position is and why.

When talking about an official "Religious Institution" or "Religious Business" who's primary function is to represent a specific Religion they have different rules which apply. Things like Discrimination or catering to certain people and all that has to be allowed. Personally it seems like a bad policy or whatever, but that doesn't matter, they are given special protection so be it.

However, when talking about any other Business who's primary function isn't about Religion and that falls under Public Accommodation meaning they're there for the general public and so forth, religious exemptions from law shouldn't apply. The reason being is that the owners Religious Beliefs aren't it's primary function. It's primary function is to serve people doing whatever it is that business does. Ex. Making pizza, selling lawn mowers, etc. We'll call those Secular Businesses to make it easy.

So for Secular Businesses there shouldn't be some Religious Exemption that allows for them to discriminate or pick and choose employee medical treatments, or anything else. If you want "Special Treatment", which is what these "Religious Freedom Laws" are really about, fine, you can do that, but not as a Secular Business. They need to qualify as a "Religious Business" instead as their primary function. That goes for any Religion too, not just Christian ones. In the secular business world we don't need the variety of business owners pushing their Religious rules on their employees or their customers. They should have a Religious Business or Membership only business if they want to do that.

Do you see where I'm going with this??? I don't want to make it too long so I'll stop here and see if I'm making sense to you so far.

originally posted by: muchmadness
House Speaker John Boehner's (R-OH) mother should have used birth control.

Your post made me laugh then I starred you...lol

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

Just to clarify, the morning after pill will not terminate an already fertilized egg. It will only stop an unfertilized egg from getting fertilized. It is NOT an abortifacient no matter what Hobby Lobby says.

Also, if you open a business, you are given a lot of "socialist" benefits to run said business: the use of highways and roads to get your product/supplies delivered, phone and power lines, maybe even the protection of our Navy to escort your ships full of crap from China. Therefore, I don't care what your religious beliefs are. You need to follow the laws of our country.

The party of "freedom" strikes again - taking away one person's freedom in favor of a company's freedom - you know, because "corporations are people my friend."



As a general note (not to the person I replied to), I will also add that the pill is used for more than just stopping pregnancy. It is prescribed for women who are prone to ovarian cysts and debilitating menstrual cramps to name just 2. Would an employer prefer to pay for abcenses? Surgery? No, they'll probably just fire you for being sickly because they don't want to cover a medication prescribed by an actual doctor. And before someone says "they shouldn't have to pay for it", our system is set up so that health insurance is a benefit. It is part of your compensation package. It is part of your paycheck. I want universal healthcare for this very reason but this is what we've got. Would you be OK with your employer dictating what you can buy with your paycheck? I doubt it.

a reply to: pfishy
The European Union guarentees the right to an abortion when the women's health is in danger, regaredless of what country a person resides in . An yet, there is a women in poland that is now blind because the courts refused to listen to the courts when her doctors claimed that his could very well be the result.

here's a few more cases worldwide:

www.cbsnews.com...

www.tytnetwork.com...

www.examiner.com...

And well just to prove how twisted some people's logic is:
thestir.cafemom.com...

If you did a search I am pretty sure that there are many cases out there in the world where the danger to the mother was not recognized by the authorities and the mother suffered. And that's with an actual pregnancy there. If people can by that unyielding when it comes to a pregnant nine year old rape victim I am pretty sure that the dangers that are posed by the possible pregnancy of an adult women would be shunned in many cases.

a reply to: FyreByrd

This bill is a grand representation of election time. Bills that go nowhere but are used to build credibility with the politicians' voting base by saying that THEY voted for such and such while saying that their opponent didn't or something. Such a waste of time...

a reply to: Krazysh0t

I am not sure if the bill even has any teeth in it. If it's the one I tracked down it seems to only voicing disapproval of the dc law. which I'm not sure if their disapproval is enough to actually cause the dc lawmakers change their law. if not it's just another stupid law cluttering the lawbooks wasting space.

a reply to: dawnstar

Even better, if for some reason the bill actually goes anywhere, it doesn't actually DO anything so the legislators don't have to worry about blame coming their way for passing the bill into law from the opposition. What a sneaky double trap. It's so annoying that REAL governance has to take a backseat when election time comes around.

Isn't this bill dead? I thought they needed to pass both chambers by last Friday?

a reply to: Krazysh0t
what's crazier is when you look at the spending bills and all the crap that's in them and well all of a sudden the lawmakers have no choice but to pass the crap because it's tied to something they all agree is needed. Then well the party that put the crap bills in it all of a sudden start blaming the other side for passing it when the crap blows up in their face.

a reply to: dawnstar

Yea. Riders should be banned. If it is important enough to be on a bill then it should get its own bill and own vote.

originally posted by: theplu

Just to clarify, the morning after pill will not terminate an already fertilized egg. It will only stop an unfertilized egg from getting fertilized. It is NOT an abortifacient no matter what Hobby Lobby says.

Interesting that you brought that up. Hobby Lobby's entire case hinged on an old study that suggested the morning after pill had a side effect that would harden the lining of the uterus and effectively prevent any unintentionally fertilized egg from implanting.

Yet a more recent study (whose results were published long before the trial) showed that there is no such side effect. So I'm left wondering why Hobby Lobby still won the case. Was there something wrong with the new study perhaps?

originally posted by: dawnstar
a reply to: Krazysh0t

I am not sure if the bill even has any teeth in it. If it's the one I tracked down it seems to only voicing disapproval of the dc law. which I'm not sure if their disapproval is enough to actually cause the dc lawmakers change their law. if not it's just another stupid law cluttering the lawbooks wasting space.

It could have had teeth in the sense that the Congress has to 'review' all new laws in the DC. They have 30 days to reject a new law. In the normal course of events the time period just runs out.

This particular action/vote was taken within the 30 days but was only symbolic because the house had officially ajourned. So the time period for blocking the new law, expanding the definition of sex discrimination, ran out.

Some 'Tale of the Hand Maiden' type group (the op mentions the name, I've forgotten already) asked the leadership (republican) for a roll-call vote in order to 'vet' candidates with respect to their discriminatory agenda. And the republican leadership complied with their request - I call that pandering, not to mention disingenious. Also, forcing tax-payers, to pay for it.

Will this mean they can fire transsexuals who use birth control pills as part of their HRT therapy, too...?

Sounds a smidgen discriminatory to me...

originally posted by: theplu
a reply to: OccamsRazor04

Just to clarify, the morning after pill will not terminate an already fertilized egg. It will only stop an unfertilized egg from getting fertilized. It is NOT an abortifacient no matter what Hobby Lobby says.

It literally has nothing to do with what Hobby Lobby says. The manufacturer, and the NIH both say it does. Hobby Lobby sued based upon what the experts said the pill did.

Also, if you open a business, you are given a lot of "socialist" benefits to run said business: the use of highways and roads to get your product/supplies delivered, phone and power lines, maybe even the protection of our Navy to escort your ships full of crap from China. Therefore, I don't care what your religious beliefs are. You need to follow the laws of our country.

You mean like Hobby Lobby did? They followed the laws, the one who does NOT want to follow the laws appears to be you. You want to decide what the law should be and have people follow you, good thing it does not work that way.

The party of "freedom" strikes again - taking away one person's freedom in favor of a company's freedom - you know, because "corporations are people my friend."

No freedom was taken away. Every employee of HL is still free to use the Plan B pill.

And before someone says "they shouldn't have to pay for it", our system is set up so that health insurance is a benefit. It is part of your compensation package. It is part of your paycheck. I want universal healthcare for this very reason but this is what we've got. Would you be OK with your employer dictating what you can buy with your paycheck? I doubt it.

That is not happening. The employer is telling you what they will pay you. If you don't like the paycheck offered don't take the job. If I want $50/hour I have no right to bitch when someone offers me $40 an hour and I take it.

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

first of all Hobby Lobby wasn't the only company that were exempt from this ruling and some of those were of the catholic faith so they don't have to offer coverage for any type of birth control whatsoever.

second item is that it was the gov't that decided that their should be minimum requirements of all policies and part of those requirements was that they include birth control, thus removing the choice from not only the businesses but also the people. It wasn't until some business saw it offending their religious morals that the idea of exemptions came into the picture and well after all legal battles were fought they got their exemptions and the gov't charted a path to delivering the birth control to their employees more than likely with the tax payer footing the bill.
here's a question for ya.
let's say we have a catholic dad of a 16 year old daughter here. he's required by law to have an insurance policy that the gov't finds acceptable. he finds it offensive to his religious morals to have that insurance policy covering birth control even more strongly than hobby lobby or any of the other businesses that got their mandates. after all the idea that a business has the obligation to instill proper morals into their employees is really quite questionable, but this is his daughter and I don't think anyone would disagree that he has that obligation!
So can he easily get an exemption also? I've looked and I don't see any indication that he can. If I am wrong can you point me to something within the obamacare legislation that states this?

and well, I've got to say that it's rather ironic. The bill or rights that protects our freedom of religion was written to protect the people, not businesses! IF it's offensive for a religious person to provide funding to insurance that covers birth control, wouldn't it also be equally offensive for the PEOPLE to fund it with their taxpayer dollars?? And yet, to give these businesses the illusion of taking the high moral they have increased the cost of delivering birth control to those who want it or may even need it to the people- even those who own the businesses!

you are preserving no one's religious freedoms!!!

all this birth control is abortion but rather the killings red blood embryos lucky enough to be born they 'll take half the circulating blood with the placenta, will exploit and poison poisons rest of his life and even his death and the funeral will lower relatives money in favor blue blood

Concern about the health of the population and, above all, Soviet women, the Ministry of Health of the USSR, on the recommendation of the Government, it was decided to ban abortions. June 27, 1936 was accepted by the CEC and SNK forbidding abort1. Before it was organized by the "broad support for the workers' draft law on the prohibition of abortion (the project was published in May 1936) in the media. In the text of the decree states that the Soviet government made "to meet the numerous allegations of women workers." "While all the bourgeois countries of the world do not know what to do with his people where to find them a job, what to feed them, we do not have enough people. We have so much to do! ... We need more and more fighters - builders of this life. We need people. Abortion is the destruction of nascent life, is unacceptable in our country building socialism. Abortion - this evil legacy of the order when the person lived narrow personal interests rather than the collective life ... In our life can not be the gap between private and public. We even such seemingly intimate questions, as a family, as the birth of children from their becoming public. Soviet woman equal rights with men. For her, the doors are open to all sectors of work. But our Soviet woman is not exempt from the great and honorable duty, which has given its nature: she is the mother, she gives birth. And it is certainly a matter of great public importance ", - wrote a big party functionary A. Solts. The People's Commissar of Health Nikolai Semashko wrote an article titled "What a wonderful law! (By the abolition of abortion in the USSR)