The Supreme Court's 5 to 4 Ruling, on birth control.

All I can say is that I will no longer shop at Hobby Lobby. If their religious beliefs are so strong, that they cannot comply with providing health care options for women (like OTHER businesses), they shouldn't be running a business.

Besides, since when does a CORPORATION have religious beliefs? Corporations are not living things, yet they are controlling what happens to living things. Ridiculous. I'm disappointed in SCOTUS.

 

From a pure legal perspective, removing the health issues about this topic, this concerns me the most, the Pandora's box.

 

If a rape is reported and the woman is taken to the hospital, won't they give her Plan B?

There was a case where a dentist was impregnating his patients (knock them out during surgery) and they only discovered it because the husband was infertile/had a vasectomy so he knew he didn't get his wife pregnant. She absolutely should be able to have an abortion at that point, regardless of the age of the fetus. I simply cannot imagine how heartless people can be, to force women to endure an unwanted pregnancy, especially when it was the result of rape.

(Oh, I forgot, if it was "legitimate" rape, pregnancy wouldn't occur. I forgot the moron that said that. He was a republican.)

 

Well you've got your homework cut out for you as I anticipate boycotts of more than one business now, given that the ruling from SCOTUS will mean other family held corporations and other larger corporations (that legally hold the title of small business on legal paper despite them being as huge as wal-mart), will need to be boycotted.


Can the boycott be large enough to make change? I don't know?

But I welcome this thread to do the job of researching and cataloging of all the businesses nationwide that are now backing out of birth control coverage.

 

I think those are some good points and I don't disagree but I also think that some pretty compelling points can also be made from a number of different positions. Just to play the devils advocate....as an employer myself....why should health care even be a part of your compensation? Why is it my responsibility to pay for your health care (aside from work comp)? Why isn't it fair for me to say "I'm paying $25 an hour...spend it on whatever you want? You can pay for insurance or buy weed. It's none of my business what you spend your money on." The transaction between us is over once I pay you what we agreed upon. Personally, I think there should be a single payer system and I justify that because all of us pay taxes and I think health care should be a right that we earn as tax-paying citizens. I also think all health care should be non-profit since it would be funded by our communities in my scenario.

As for your second point...I saw a great video today pointing out how people are forced to fund many things they don't agree with so if corporations want to be "people" then they should get used to paying for things they don't agree with because the rest of us do it all the time. I don't agree with war and corporate subsidies but I pay for them unwillingly. Also, if the corporations want to be considered "people"....well....we put people in prison for crimes. I'd be happy to consider them people when we can start locking those motherfuckers up for the shit they pull.

 

Vote with your dollar. That's what I do and I do it often and always. I will not shop at places that I know don't support my positions....even if it costs me more money.

 

Problem is, and you can check the record on the rhetoric on this issue in the 2008 and 2012 elections.


There are strong objections for reproductive healthcare being funded by taxpayers, whose religious beliefs bar them from supporting abortion or other contraceptive procedures.

^
I disagree, but since we don't have this system in place women are in a bind.

This also explains why the Republican Party is having a hard time with the women demographic during elections, their party platform is out of touch on a realistic level as well as a mathematical and this financial level.

 

I don't doubt any of that. ^^ The interesting thing is that the "religious right" wasn't always against abortion and reproductive medicine. I remember reading something a while back about the history of the movement and it wasn't even an issue with them until certain people arrived on the scene. I think they maybe even had the opposite view until that point but I'd have to do some research on that to provide links. That's just something off the top of my head. I'd invite anyone who knows more about that to correct me or fill in the finer details.

 

They really are an obnoxious company, constantly trying to shove their religion down customer's throats. Last time I was in one of the stores, they were playing gospel hymns loudly on the speaker system. I left right away.

It doesn't work 100% of the time.

 

My general view is that tax payer money once paid up by a citizen, is no longer controlled or owned nor does the $ surrendered reflect the individual citizen's views on anything, when government spends it on whatever.

Government's only job is to serve the public good with taxpayer money, and they'd be doing that if thy offered birth control as part of healthcare through a single-payer system.


The bible is very clear that if one is to not be a hypocrite and be found worthy for the kingdom of heaven, they must (and I quote Jesus here) "sell all that they own" and this would include all land property as well, thus absolving them from having to pay a tax, or break a law by refusing to pay a tax on property they own.

This also means all Christian businesses, are not recognized by God himself and are seen as attempting to serving both a worldly civil entity and God.


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Sorry guys I'm reacting to this topic from 3 perspectives:

1. As a fellow Christian and in that context criticizing the family that thinks they are in the morally superior camp in regards to their business and scripture.

2. As a citizen of the USA.

3. From a legal perspective on the SCOTUS' majority ruling as well as it's dissent and the implications it causes.

 

Not necessarily, especially now that many Catholic or religious based hospitals can how potentially use SCOTUS' ruling in this case as legal grounds to stop certain medical procedures and treatments.


I'd have to be a secular hospital now I think, but given the regional monopoly the Church has on hospital care, for some cases like you described I just don't know. This one of the many issues that can ripple from SCOTUS' ruling.

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Now I personally don't like abortions that aren't given the legal okay, outside the parameters of what Roe v. Wade allows.

I do personally believe that at a certain point in development a fetus is a person, and abortion should not be performed except in cases of injury and death to the child and mother if no action is taken, even during cases of rape and incest.

There are documented cases where the child of such a dark heinous act, have turned out to be really good people.


That Republican who said that was Todd Akin of Ohio, and he lost the election that happened shortly after.


But don't forget what's happening in Texas, and in Virginia, regarding women's access too, or rings and legal hoops they now have to jump through to get factual information on reproductive health and an abortion.

I believe former governor of Virginia Bob McDonald, signed a law forcing women (and I guess any girl who is pregnant and not legally an adult), to get a vaginal ultrasound before they can get an abortion....hence they want females to see an ultrasound picture of the fetus they are going to kill regardless of the chance that doing so might traumatize them all over again if the fetus was gotten there by forcible means. The law does not care regardless, and I think violates the constitution as cruel and unusual punishment, but whatever.


Also North Carolina's governor also did something similar, despite getting elected on the campaign promise he wouldn't touch women's healthcare issues....his political party pressured him into breaking that promise.

 

I keep seeing the comment of "church and state", this has nothing to do with that. A corporation is not state.
Also if you read the decision carefully and listen to real legal interpretations of the ruling it does not allow anyone to just completely opt out of something. Hobby Lobby still provides many different forms of BC and did you know that it's min wage is $14hr. That is a very good wage that is above and beyond most other companies for the similar type of job.
If you don't like that they play gospel music then leave, just like you can leave another store for playing rap music, it's not going to matter much to them.

You want to bash hobby lobby yet no one has called out Obama for breaking his own healthcare law. Hobby lobby did what they felt was necessary and got a ruling in their favor, Obama has taken power beyond the office yet I hear crickets.

 

Such as what?

 

He's probably referencing all the executive orders and actions the President has done.


But technically he's wrong because The President has the authority to place conditions on those private entities who have business and contracts with the federal government.

^thats legal and there's a precedent for that.

 

We'll lets start with the recess appointments that the court just ruled against him on. Then how about breaking his own healthcare law by the delays he just decided to do. Then not going to congress when he negotiated with terrorists to free the American deserter. Just to name a few.

 

Oh, so you watch Fox. Cool.

 

Your derailing the thread a bit to make this about Obama rather than just the court ruling. That is the main reason President Obama wasn't brought up in the thread, because we aren't discussing the legality or illegality of his actions here.




I read and even linked to the rationale and attempts to narrow the definition of the hobby lobby ruling.

Indeed the Justices did say it it applied to privately held companies where no more than 5 individuals hold ownership.

What you have to understand is that despite them narrowly defining it, that their words in that regard aren't set in stone with the way the legal process works, and uses argumentation to take a weak point and widen or broaden the definitions and terms of a Supreme Court ruling.


For instance why is the number have to be 5 owners? That number is arbitrary and the general premise of the rule can be chipped at. Why not 1-4 private owners?


There are enough small mom and pop shops employing people, where this ruling will apply too.

The whole point of incorporating is to give oneself limited liability in legal matters, but when it comes to this issue suddenly they feel their personally responsible for the medical practices their employees make. They don't have a personal understanding of the degree of their separations of responsibility.

 

You are correct and apologize for that. And no I don't watch Fox News but would rather watch them then msnbc.

I don't understand why it is so important that a company provides an employee everything? Why can't they pay for something themselves? The ruling just backs up that a company does not have to do everything for an employee.

 

Wages aren't big enough to expect employees to afford all possible medical expenses on their own.


And it is also tradition that employers use "benefits" to lure the best talent.

Decades ago, after WWII price controls were in place on wages/salaries in an attempt to control inflation, businesses proposed offering health insurance to their employees, and in return those businesses got a tax write-off from government.

The problem is nowadays medical costs and treatments in science have advanced with innovation from private companies and they became more and more expensive, drug companies abuse the patient system to maintain locks on certain markets, and hospitals are charging woefully different rates for the same services based on geographical location among other factors.


Also as the decades past, companies abused the tax-write off system for healthcare for their employees as well.


Obamacare addressed some of these cost issues but not all of them.



Then you have the moral religious issues, which is kinda the what hobby lobby legal cause was about.

 

There are passages in the bible that I can use to make an argument that any medical treatment designed to prolong one's life violates my religious values, because if God is calling that person "home", then that person should go "home". (I.e. They should die because it's natural)


^ legal fat loophole.


Why offer health insurance at all when the whole point of it is to help people afford medical treatments designed to ease pain and suffering and to heal injuries and sicknesses?