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[dramatis]

From The Atlantic.

Another case involving the ACA is being heard by the Supreme Court, and once again it involves the ever concerning "women's health issues".

This time, it isn’t a big corporation like Hobby Lobby seeking an exemption to covering birth control. It is a group of religious nonprofits claiming that filing the one-page form to enshrine their objection and get a birth-control accommodation “facilitates” a sin—making them participants in the sin. The feelings in the room were so intense that Paul Clement, one of the most equable and careful appellate advocates of his generation, actually claimed that that requiring his clients—the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic nonprofit that provides elder-care services—to certify their objection to providing contraceptive coverage was the same as if the government came “into one of the Little Sisters’ homes and set up shop in a room … and then they operated a Title X [birth-control] clinic in our homes.”

The objection now is that, as Clement put it, “They are going to hijack our health plans and provide the coverage against our will.” A few moments later, Chief Justice John Roberts—whose vote against the government is not in doubt—picked up on the term “hijacking”: “It seems to me that that’s an accurate description of what the government wants to do,” he said. Then, a few minutes later: “The government is hijacking their process, their insurance company, their third-party administrator.” Finally, Kennedy took up the metaphor, asking why the government found it “necessary to hijack the plan” in order to get female employees the coverage they are entitled to under the statute.

The repetition of that word bodes ill for the government. Even more forebodingly, Roberts, Kennedy, and Alito seemed utterly oblivious to the other side of the question. If the plan “belongs” to the employer (Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out that it does not, by law), then the benefits surely “belong” to the employee. By definition, she has earned her lawful wages, which include government-required employee benefits.

The decision of how to use those benefits—of whether and when to conceive—is a profoundly personal one that involves sensitive issues of health as well as ethical issues that are hers, and not the employers’, to decide. Unlike a church employee, a woman who works for a hospital or university is often not a member of the sponsoring church; and whether she is or not, the conscience chiefly involved in contraception is hers, not that of a sacerdotal figure in a remote office. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli tried to bring that question to the fore. What the challengers were asking, he said, was that “those rights or those employees who may not share [the] petitioners’ beliefs be extinguished.”

Alito wasn’t interested in employees or their consciences, however. Did Verrilli not understand that this provision offended the important, the traditional, the conservative American religious groups? “It’s not just Catholics and Baptists and evangelicals, but Orthodox Jews, Muslim groups, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, an Indian tribe, the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye—have said that this presents an unprecedented threat to religious liberty in this country,” he said.

At best it'll end up a 4-4 tie, which means the case will probably reach the court again in the future.

The author has a somewhat sad assessment of what the conservative justices suggest for women towards the end that basically sums it all up. Have a read.

 

[WaffleTaco]

If this is the case I am thinking it is...than it really is such a stupid one and a waste of time. They are claiming that them having to fill out an exemption status form goes against their relegious rights due to it being an unfair burden. The problem and why it is stupid, is that them filling out the exemption form is how they get tax exemptions in the first place.

 

[Foffy]

Religion is one of the incredible amount of cognitive cancers in the world today. What a shame to see its infectious filth be permeated the way that it is. Your sins are fucking ghosts, fam.

Step back and really assess how fucking stupid this particular situation is, and the fact it is going to the Supreme Court.

 

[dramatis]

NPR also has a story on this.

But just a few miles from the Little Sisters home is Georgetown University, an elite Catholic institution, where many of the students, faculty, staff and their dependents are not Catholic, and they want birth control coverage. Alison Tanner, co-editor-in-chief of the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, helped put together a brief in the case filed on behalf of the estimated thousands of people on her campus who are currently getting birth control under the accommodation, but would not if the Little Sisters prevail in the Supreme Court.

Tanner notes that nationally 1.9 million students attend roughly 1,000 religiously affiliated schools that object to birth control. As she sees it, requiring these institutions to opt out by notifying the government or the insurer of their objections does not impose much of a burden.

"The burden there is light," Tanner says. "The burden on the woman who will not have insurance access to contracpetion is heavy without some form of workaround for the religious objection."

Indeed, some 28 states impose much stricter requirements for birth control coverage. According to the Institute of Medicine, since birth control is prescribed not just to avoid pregnancy, but also to treat various female medical conditions — it is the most frequently taken drug for women ages 15-60. And it is expensive, $30 a month and more for pills, and as much as $1,000 for buying and having an IUD inserted.

 

[studyguy]

Heard the NPR story, was floored. Seriously it seems like the dumbest fucking complaint you could imagine. The religious institution opts out, files a form to the government so they basically pick up the slack for these assholes denying birth control. The religious institution is left completely out of the situation with birth control at this point.

The birth control provided by the government according to NPR isn't even LISTED IN THE ACTUAL BENEFITS FROM INSURANCE TO THE INSTITUTION, it's literally its own separate thing that in no way reflects the benefits offered by the objecting religious groups in any way, shape or form. Yet even that somehow doesn't absolve them of the supposed "sin."

Get the fuck out of here. We know what this is about.

Also for anyone interested, I'd follow up on the rising of the use of "Defense of Religious Liberty/Freedom" NPR put out a while back. The phrase Religious Liberty/Freedom has basically edged closer and closer to a simple dog whistle for anti-gay, anti-woman's rights, anti-non Christian religious rights more and more. Simply calling out gays, women and other religions has fallen out of fashion, thus the need to call it RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, because lets be honest, anyone can get behind that idea. Basically the new southern strategy, you see it a ton with Cruz and evangelicals even now.