One would think, based on the media coverage and the signs of protestors and the statements of "those in the know" that Hobby Lobby was some kind of awful company hell bent on destroying the rights of women. I was just wondering if that were true, so I actually bothered to look into it. What would it take for Hobby Lobby to be attacking the rights of women? Would it take them not providing birth control to their female employees? How about not providing health insurance? What about telling their employees how to live their lives. Okay, well, if they did all three of these things, then I'd agree they are violating the rights of their female employees. So...
Are they denying their employees health insurance? Nope
Are they denying their employees birth control through that insurance? Nope...they just aren't providing abortifacient forms...but ALL other forms are provided.
Are they telling their female employees how to live their lives? Outside of work, they have no right to do this and clearly are not doing this.
So what are they doing? Well, they are a privately owned company founded with a basis in the Christian faith who do not believe in providing funding for certain forms of birth control because the owners believe those forms cause abortions and therefore end life. This is actually not an uncommon belief in society, and it is the whole reason for this case.
I won't get into the merits of whether a corporation has religious freedom per se. However, the administration has chosen to arbitrarily hand out exemptions to this rule as political favors, but can't see fit to do so for religious liberty reasons? That seems odd. Over religious liberty, they'll take it to court. All right. What else? Right, this is not a publicly traded company that sells stock, etc. It is a privately held corporation. That means that there is one owner, not a bunch of stock holders. One might not find this to be a huge difference, but I do. Corporate personhood is an arguable legal concept, but there is a huge difference to me between a corporation that sells stock and is publicly traded and is therefore clearly not
operating under anything other than secular rules and a company that is privately owned and those owners believe the company they own and run should be operating under certain guiding principles. In other words, one is clearly a property right for the private owners and the other is not. Therefore, I'd lean in the direction of erring on the side of the property rights of the owners of a privately held company who are claiming a religious freedom exemption.
So,
to be clear...Hobby Lobby has provided many forms of birth control
through their insurance policy for a long time. Obamacare is forcing it
to provide abortifacient forms of birth control for the first time.
Abortifacients aren't birth control (preventing fertilization) but
rather end the pregnancy (abortion). Hobby Lobby has not provided this
one type of birth control option in the past because
it is against the moral standard of the private owners (this is not a
publicly owned company). Hobby Lobby in no way says their employees
can't have an abortion or use an abortifacient, they just won't pay for
it. The government wants to force them to provide this option which
potentially would mean that they would have to participate in an
activity that they consider, based on religious grounds, to be morally
repugnant.
Okay, so, according to the left, because they only
provide non abortifacient forms of birth control, this makes Hobby Lobby
an abhorrent company hell bent on attacking women? This is the same
kind of logic that lets the left pat themselves on the back for forcing
hundreds of thousands of people who were happy with their insurance into
being forced to purchase insurance they didn't want and that was more
expensive. Regardless of your feelings about abortion or whether owners
of private companies have religious freedom rights, the protestors and
left wing policy spinners aren't defending women or women's rights.
Sounds to me like this isn't about women at all! Rather, it is about
some people's irrational belief that all forms of birth control and
abortion should be freely available.
1 comment:
As the author has surmised, the media once again have created a storm having little to do with people's rights, company's rights, or reality. One hopes that customers will see through the attempts at bad news to the reality of the situation.
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