With A Stroke Of His Pen, President Obama Renders Hobby Lobby Ruling Obsolete

By: Rmusemore
Monday, July, 13th, 2015, 10:00 am
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There is a phrase, “you’d complain if you were hung with a new rope” that loosely means there are some people that can never be satisfied regardless of the accommodations other people make for them. The phrase can also mean that the people who complain incessantly and can never be satisfied is because they cannot always have things their way. In 21st Century America, evangelical Republicans are those who demand it is “their way or the highway” and there is no greater example than the religious Republican crusade to control women’s reproductive health; or better put, to force every woman in America into being perpetual birth machines. Last year a wildly popular evangelical talking point to support their demand for control over American women was they would not tolerate any woman, married or single, having “consequence free sex;” restricting birth control was the religious right’s method of punishing women who failed to toe the evangelical line and remain celibate or perpetually pregnant.
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The idea of Christian conservatives wielding control over women’s reproductive health was behind the Hobby Lobby v. Burwell lawsuit that the Vatican-5 on the Supreme Court decided was evangelical employer’s religious liberty to control women and prevent them from having consequence free sexual relations. According to the Catholic justices’ ruling, the Obama Administration ‘must‘ provide an accommodation for “religious” for-profit corporations and on Friday, President Obama did just that in response to the High Court’s decision. In fact, what President Obama did was effectively neuter the Hobby Lobby ruling and ensure that all women, even those employed by ‘religious corporations,’ will still have birth control covered at no cost to them; even if their evangelical employers object and refuse to provide it. The sad, unfortunate women who happen to work for a church, or place of worship though, are still bound to adhere to their employer’s religious edict that under no circumstances will they be allowed to have ‘consequence free’ sex.
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The way the new rule is written, a religious corporation that refuses to allow their employees’ health plans to provide contraception will write a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and claim that their religious freedom demands they control women’s sexual activities. The HHS will then notify a third-party insurer that the company’s theocratic owners’ insist on controlling women and the third-party insurer will provide birth control coverage to the employees at no additional cost to the religious corporation or the female employees. The Secretary of the HHS released a statement saying that “Women across the country should have access to preventive services, including contraception. We recognize the deeply held views on these issues and are committed to securing women’s access to important preventive services at no additional costs while respecting religious beliefs.”
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There were already provisions and accommodations for religious non-profits in the contraception mandate within the Affordable Care Act, but Catholics were not satisfied and joined Hobby Lobby’s evangelical owners to sue the Administration. Their absurd religious beliefs informed them that all forms of contraceptives are abortion. Although the High Court conceded that according to all known medical and biological science birth control is in no possible way abortion, the Papal-5 ruled if that was the ‘deeply-held‘ view of the Vatican, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and Christian corporations, then by dog birth control is abortion. The President’s “official” accommodation came just after a ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals striking down yet another evangelical attempt to control women’s sexuality and deny their access to basic reproductive healthcare.
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The 5th Circuit’s ruling came down from an “ultraconservative judge,” Jerry Smith, who told a cabal of evangelical employers that if they insisted on restricting women’s reproductive choices by refusing to include contraceptive coverage in their health insurance plans, they “had to submit letters to HHS” so their female employees could have a semblance of control over their own reproductive health. The evangelical employers, who are not houses of worship, religious non-profits, or churches, complained bitterly to the courts that if they were forced to submit a form to HHS, they would lose their control over women and they would “be allowed” to get the contraception coverage elsewhere. The ultra-conservative judge was not the least bit impressed or sympathetic to the bovine excrement religious liberty complaint and threw the evangelicals out of court.
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Read more
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/07/13/president-obama-renders-hobby-lobby-ruling-obsolete-rule.html