Supreme Court To Take Up Controversial Birth Control Cases

What is a corporation? Is a corporation an individual person with religious rights? Does a corporation have a conscience. The Supreme Court announced today that it will take up 2 cases in which it will decide if the religious rights of for profit corporations, to deny birth control coverage on religious grounds, is constitutional.

The Supreme Court will hear the most high-profile case, filed by the Christian-owned craft supply chain Hobby Lobby, as well as Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, a case filed by a Pennsylvania-based furniture company owned by a family of Mennonites. The cases will be heard together, likely in March 2014, with a decision expected in June.
www.huffingtonpost.com...

Since the Citizen's United ruling that corporations are people with First Amendment protection, the question arises "Should that extend to religious rights as well?". It's a slippery slope. Can a for profit corporation decide what laws it will and will not follow based on it's owners' religious beliefs? Should a corporation be able to decide which prescription drugs their prescription drug coverage plan will cover and which they will not cover?

"Should the court decide that this service is something bosses can decide for their employees, what else can bosses decide?" said Judy Waxman, vice president of health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center. "Can they decide they don't want to cover vaccines or HIV medications? Can they say, 'I don't believe in these kinds of wage and hour rules?' To say, 'Yes, a corporation can impose its religion on employees' -- that can have very far-reaching implications."

Can a corporation owned by Jehovah's Witness deny insurance coverage for blood transfusions, requiring their employees to buy an additional rider to pay for such an emergency?

Whose religious beliefs are legitimate and whose are not?

Will a corporation be able to deny maternity coverage for pregnant women that are not married because they disapprove of premarital sex?

Should a corporation be able to deny a man a prescription for his STD because they disapprove of the way contracted it?



The White House has released the following statement:

The health care law puts women and families in control of their health care by covering vital preventive care, like cancer screenings and birth control, free of charge. Earlier this year, the Obama Administration asked the Supreme Court to consider a legal challenge to the health care law’s requirement that for-profit corporations include birth control coverage in insurance available to their employees. We believe this requirement is lawful and essential to women’s health and are confident the Supreme Court will agree..................
www.huffingtonpost.com...

I think this is going be interesting.

reply to post by windword

a corporation is a fictitious legal entity, however those that own a corporation do obviously have moral values (in theory, anway).

if you want an abortion, go pay for it on your dollar; i'll not be supporting such a horrendous act. this issue shouldn't even have to come before the court.

reply to post by Bob Sholtz


We're not talking about abortion, here. We're talking about contraception. Contraception is the best method of keeping abortion numbers low.

reply to post by windword


And contraception is also one of the cheapest things you could ever buy.

Take some responsibility and buy your own.

Some people believe contraception to be morally wrong. Some of those people do not like being forced to pay for your choices whatever you might think about those choices.

Also, the idea of a corporation being a person for the purposes of free speech was based on the idea of independent citizens banding together with their personal monies and incorporating in 501(c)3 and 4 orgs in order to amass enough clout to be able to play on the election stage with a true voice. The use of the word corporation is intended to make you think that Sony, Coca-Cola, et al., were trying to slap branding on candidates when in actuality they have far more power through lobbyists than they do through direct contributions and ads, and if you're being intellectually honest, you know that. Besides, they can't risk directly antagonizing one party or the other too much and getting blacklisted on the party "enemies" list ... look at what happened to Gibson Guitars.

No, they really just got made when the little people started finding ways to try to counter the established money power structures put in place by TPTB.

reply to post by ketsuko


Some people think war is wrong, should they be able to NOT pay taxes that fund wars?

reply to post by windword


Defense is a clearly mandated part of the COTUS as is freedom of religion. I don't think you'll find birth control in there anywhere.

reply to post by ketsuko


The use of contraception is a constitutionally protected right.

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965),[1] is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives. By a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy".

Griswold v. Connecticut involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception."[2] Although the law was passed in 1879, the statute was almost never enforced.
Attempts had been made to test the constitutionality of the law; however, the challenges failed on technical grounds. In Tileston v. Ullman (1943), a doctor and mother challenged the statute on the grounds that a ban on contraception could, in certain sexual situations, threaten the lives and well-being of patients.
en.wikipedia.org...

Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), is an important United States Supreme Court case that established the right of unmarried people to possess contraception on the same basis as married couples and, by implication, the right of unmarried couples to engage in potentially nonprocreative sexual intercourse (though not the right of unmarried people to engage in any type of sexual intercourse).
en.wikipedia.org...

Additionally

Contraceptive Use in the United States:
• More than 99% of women aged 15–44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method.
www.guttmacher.org...

That includes Catholic women and women of all religious denominations.

reply to post by windword


And no one is saying that they can't use it, only that we don't have to pay for it.

I don't see how that stops you from getting a scrip and walking into your nearest walmart for a $4 pack of the pill.

Not sticking it under insurance isn't denying you from having it.

reply to post by ketsuko


The Affordable Care Act is law. It mandates that employers provide health insurance policies with birth control coverage for women. The question is should religious exceptions to the LAW to extended to for profit corporations.

A woman can't just go buy the pill. She needs a script from a doctor. That costs money. The Pill is not always cheap either.

Aviane, cash prices ranging from $20 to $45 for a monthly pack
Gianvi, $45 to $74
Loestrin 24FE, $48 to $116
Lutera, $19 to $40
Ocella, $40 to $80
Ortho-Tri-Cyclen Lo 28, $37 to $162
Tri-Nessa 28, $16 to $49
Tri-Sprintec 28, $12 to $49
Yasmin-28, $80 to $105
Yaz-28, $65 to $130
finance.yahoo.com...

That is a per month cost.

And, many women rely on The Pill for other maladies besides avoiding pregnancy.

reply to post by windword


Boohoo. I've been dirt poor. I was that way during my early married life. We budgeted down to the penny. We had no insurance. We lived in a hole that was under $300/month rent and had a sewer that backed up into it on a semi-regular basis.

Somehow, being a young married couple and joined at the hip, we still found a way to have birth control.

And we paid for it, and we didn't expect that it was anyone else's responsibility to take care of it for us.

And if the place where you work does not provide a policy that has birth control covered ... well, you don't have to work for them. No one is forcing you to. And for most policies that don't cover birth control for contraceptive purposes, they will cover it for bonified health purposes. So if you have overian cysts and it becomes an actual medicine, then those policies will cover it, but if all you want it for is safe sex, then it's elective, and they won't. Fluke's Georgetown policy was like this.

reply to post by ketsuko


All that is beside the point.

The Supreme Court is going to decide if for profit corporations have protected religious rights. If they rule yes, corporations DO have protected religious rights, then birth control isn't the only thing that YOUR employer can dictate what is and what is not a legitimate health concern for YOU based on the owner of the corporation's religious bias. This could extend to, for example, a Christian Science employer who doesn't believe in any medical intervention, or a fundamentalist who wants to deny maternity care to an unwed female employee, based on their own personal beliefs.

reply to post by windword

Dear winword,

You've put a lot into your thread, as usual. I don't know if I'll get to it all tonight.

May I start with Citizens United v. FEC? It didn't declare that corporations are people. That's a slogan designed to fit on the bumper stickers of angry people. From the comments on the case from The Harvard Law Review (I'll dig up the actual case holding if you think it's important)

Though the Court ruled that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as natural persons regarding independent political expenditures, the same corporations still do not have the same panoply of rights as natural persons, even after Citizens United. Corporations and unions are still precluded from making donations directly to candidates’ campaigns. And Citizens United left intact systemic safeguards, namely the FEC’s strict disclosure and reporting requirements.

Remember that this also applies to Unions, but I hear no one exclaiming "Unions aren't people."

One of the problems that the government had in oral arguments was that their position would allow the government to ban books. That, not surprisingly, didn't go over well with the Court.

The ruling is completely in line with a 1978 Supreme Court case, First National Bank of Boston v. Belotti in which the Court said:

If the speakers here were not corporations, no one would suggest that the State could silence their proposed speech. It is the type of speech indispensable to decision making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual. The inherent worth of the speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual.

So this is not going to be a question of whether a corporation is a person. It has never been a question of that, even in Citizens United. That may make things a little clearer.

With repsect,
Charles1952

reply to post by windword

Dear windword,

We're not talking about abortion, here. We're talking about contraception. Contraception is the best method of keeping abortion numbers low.

One of the two cases, perhaps the more famous, is Hobby Lobby. I haven't looked at the other case, but for Hobby Lobby, you've got it backwards, maybe a typo.

For the record: Hobby Lobby’s issue is specifically with emergency contraception and other procedures that they consider to be abortifacients, not preventative birth control. . . . [It's not true] that the company wants to not pay for the Pill; because they were perfectly happy to pay for oral contraceptives now.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by windword


No, it isn't really beside the point.

The point about oral contraceptives being health care isn't exactly true. They only are in certain cases, and most policies cover them in those cases, even those policies that don't cover them as contraception.

Contraception isn't medically necessary. It is elective which is why those policies don't cover it.

When you are diagnosed with something like ovarian cysts, oral contraceptives can become medically necessary, and then those policies cover them.

If left alone, a woman will not fall apart and die if she is not provided with oral contraceptives.

reply to post by windword

Dear windword,

The Affordable Care Act is law. It mandates that employers provide health insurance policies with birth control coverage for women. The question is should religious exceptions to the LAW to extended to for profit corporations.

You're certainly right that Obamacare (euphemistically known as the Affordable Care Act) is the law. I'm surprised you stress that. The reason the case is being appealed is because at least one Circuit Court has ruled that the particular provision involved is unconstitutional, and the Constitution is also the law.

I would have thought that the question is, may the government order the owners of a business to pay for goods and services which directly violate deeply held religious convictions in spite of the First Amendment?

We'll see.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by windword

Dear windword,

Some people think war is wrong, should they be able to NOT pay taxes that fund wars?

This a not a tax, collected by the government and going into the general fund. It is an order that individuals must begin doing something they never had to before, and which at least one Circuit Court believes, violates their fundamental religious beliefs.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by windword


I have a serious question about the obozocare law you seem to be championing - and I guess you would know the answers -

Are the american indians exempt from the obozocare individual mandates and taxes? Are american amish exempt? Are american muslims exempt?

I believe they all are - I could be wrong -

I believe it is based on their religious beliefs.

reply to post by charles1952


Charles,

Thanks for your very thorough explanation of "Citizen's United". It does help me better understand the difference between the freedoms of individuals and corporations better. You flatter me when you say that I put a lot into it, I didn't, and I'm not very well versed on the legal aspects to the ACA and the Citizen's United case.

As far as Hobby Lobby only objecting to certain kinds of birth control, I have two issues, personally. The proposal of an employer being able to pick and choose what medical methods an insurance covered doctor's office visit can and cannot include, based on each individual employers biases, is tedious at best. It threatens the doctor's ability to freely recommend all available options, without first referring to some paperwork that tells him what he can and cannot offer this particular patient without having to schedule an additional, non insurance covered appointment. It places an undue burden on both the doctor and woman, in my opinion.

Secondly, in this case Hobby Lobby is adopting a definition of abortion that is not supported by the American Medical Association and the medical community, in general. Hobby Lobby is redefining fertilization as pregnancy, while the medical community and the AMA have officially defined pregnancy to begin at implantation. Abortions can only be performed on pregnant women.

Hobby Lobby owners are entitled to their religious views, but they're not entitled to legislate religious beliefs into law, by redefining legal terms. By claiming that pregnancy begin upon conception, therefore certain types of contraception cause abortion, they're claiming that the law shouldn't apply to them. But, in reality, the law doesn't require them to facilitate abortion, by definition.

For the record: Hobby Lobby’s issue is specifically with emergency contraception and other procedures that they consider to be abortifacients, not preventative birth control. . . . [It's not true] that the company wants to not pay for the Pill; because they were perfectly happy to pay for oral contraceptives now.

They may be saying that they're only against IUDs and The Morning After Pill now, but the pro-life agenda classifies The Pill as an abortifacient, and it's only a matter of time until The Pill is on their's or someone else's list of things that are immoral. There has been a record number of religious institution and colleges that were happily offering birth control to their employees and students until the ACA came along, and they changed their policies, on principle. Georgetown University is one of them.

Some people think war is wrong, should they be able to NOT pay taxes that fund wars?

This a not a tax, collected by the government and going into the general fund. It is an order that individuals must begin doing something they never had to before, and which at least one Circuit Court believes, violates their fundamental religious beliefs.

My point being, we don't get to pick and choose where our tax dollars go, based on our religious biases, and a public, for profit corporation shouldn't be able pick and choose what laws they want to follow either, based on the owners' religious bias. They need to follow the societal laws, just like everybody else, and not be able to discriminate based on religious excuses.

reply to post by ketsuko

No, it isn't really beside the point.

Your personal tale of poverty and woe, is beside the point.

reply to post by Happy1


Religious non profit institutions are exempt. For profit public corporations are not.