Allow me to fix the headline for the NY Times:
Democrats Push Bill to
Reverse Abridge
Supreme Court Constitutional Protections of Religious persons and the businesses they run.
WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress said Tuesday that they had developed legislation to override the Supreme Court decision on contraceptives. The bill would ensure that women had access to insurance coverage for birth control even if they worked for businesses that had religious objections.
The bill, put together in consultation with the Obama administration, would require for-profit corporations like Hobby Lobby Stores to provide and pay for contraceptive coverage, along with other preventive health services, under the Affordable Care Act.
It is pretty clear that this administration, along with a good number of Democrats could give a total of 1 fart about the US Constitution. How do they think that they can somehow get around Constitutional protections of non abridgment by essentially declaring that if your organization makes a profit then it is somehow not "religious"?
This is a part of a huge problem going on in Washington and state houses around the country: Politicians creating clearly unconstitutional laws in the hopes that they won't get challenged. If the laws are challenged you have the long wait, and expense of getting it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
It is sad that women are being used as political tools to dismantle constitutional protections and enumerated rights. Women's personal choices have no business being put up against enumerated rights. Women are just going to have to understand that under
this democratic republic religious groups are exempted from certain things. If you don't like it, then you have the right to choose not to work for such a group.
This should not be cast as a Republican vs. Democrat, male vs. female or religion vs. secular fight. It is a constitutional issue which was decided correctly. What needs to be explained to people is that:
1) The Hobby Lobby Decision does not stop women from obtaining contraception.
2) The government has no business dictating to other individuals that they have to pay for someone else's "medicine" for their lifestyle choices under threat of fines, etc.. If the government wants there to be cost free contraception for women, it should provide and pay for it.
“The one thing we’re going to do during this work period, sooner rather than later, is to ensure that women’s lives are not determined by virtue of five white men,” Mr. Reid said Tuesday.
This is both sexist and racist. Period.
In its 5-to-4 decision last week, the Supreme Court said that a federal rule requiring many employers to provide contraceptive coverage for female employees was unlawful because it violated a 1993 law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
That law says that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless the burden is “the least restrictive means” to advance “a compelling governmental interest.”
The court said that a family-owned for-profit corporation may engage, like an individual, in “the exercise of religion.”
1) I have a problem with the decision turning on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. I have a problem with the fact that such a piece of legislation had to be created in the first place. I think that any clear reading of the US constitution should cover all of this.
2) The ruling did not say that corporations, like an individual [meaning: person], may engage in the exercise of religion. The ruling said that a corporation, profit or non-profit may be organized for
any legal purpose. Such a legal purpose may be to conduct a for profit hobby business under the Christian principles of it's founders. Therefore the Corporation is the expression of the individuals that founded it and it is the founders principles that are being exercised
viathe corporate entity they created.
I know that the average person has a hard time understanding the difference between what the NY Times asserted and what the Supreme Court actually determined, but it is the job of those representatives in government to understand the difference and to make sure the people are made to understand that.
Ms. Murray’s bill criticizes the court’s majority opinion and declares that “employers may not discriminate against their female employees” in the coverage of preventive health services.
Of course that is already the law. What is also the law, you know, that came before the ACA is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and that pesky first amendment to the Constitution.
To this end, it says that an employer “shall not deny coverage of a specific health care item or service” where coverage is required under any provision of federal law. This requirement, it says, shall apply to employers notwithstanding the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
In other words we're trying to get around not only the RFRA but also the first amendment. Essentially, fuck the constitution! If I want it, then I shall get it. Seriously, like this chick, and yes, for proposing this bullshit, she gets called a chick, seems to think that the Federal government should just trample on people's rights just because vagina!
Seriously. This is what this is: Just because Vagina. It is pretty shocking that the US has come to a point where a blatant attack on a basic fundamental freedom goes without stinging commentary in mainstream media.
Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado and a co-author of the House version, said: “Our main concern is making sure that women are not denied contraceptives while we sit around trying to figure out what to do. The bill is an interim solution, to make sure women can get birth control while we look at broader issues, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
Of course the main problem with this comment is that women are not being denied contraception. Their employers are asserting their right to not pay for [some of] it. The women are still free, as they were before the ACA to purchase any legal form of contraception they wish to purchase. I suppose it's too hard for the NY Times to point that out to their readers.
