3.25.2014

Anti-choicer Dana Loesch shills for Hobby Lobby's anti-birth control and contraception policies

The rabid anti-choice Dana Loesch attacks contraception and birth control yet again, in order to defend Hobby Lobby in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. She also attacked Sandra Fluke for stating the truth about the company's birth control policies and its impact should it go HL's way.

Loesch got in her usual Fluke-bashing cheap shots in.



















WRONG, Dana. Hobby Lobby IS denying contraception and birth control coverage as of 2012.





People For The American Way discusses the ramifications of the case:
If right-wing America had set out to design a Supreme Court case that combined all of its political fetishes, it could not have done better than to come up with Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. v. Sebelius, a devilishly complex assault on Obamacare, women’s health care rights in the workplace, and the embattled idea that the Bill of Rights is for people, not corporations.  The outlandish claims of the company involved would not have a prayer except for Citizens United, the miracle gift of 2010 that just keeps giving. 
Hobby Lobby is a big business that wants to deny thousands of its female employees access to certain contraceptives, like Plan B and certain IUDs, which are supposed to be available to everyone under Obamacare but which the company says it finds theologically objectionable.  Ironically, Hobby Lobby’s private insurance plan fully funded these religiously incorrect forms of birth control for several years before the 2010 passage of the Patient Care and Affordable Care Act and the Department of Health and Human Services’ issuance of its “Preventive Services” Rule, which made coverage for them obligatory.  So it was the workings of Obamacare which apparently gave this business entity its corporate epiphany that these forms of birth control were sinful and the will to fight the contraceptives it had once been perfectly content to subsidize.  Amazingly, this challenge produced an off-the-rails decision by the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that the company’s “religious” rights had been violated.

[...]

Business Corporations Have Never Had Religious Rights and the Idea Is AbsurdThe astounding nature of the decision becomes clear when we focus on the fact that Hobby Lobby is a regular business corporation, secular in its operations and devoted to profit-making purposes.  It is neither a church nor a religious organization.  It does not hire its workers based on religious preferences or practices.  Under the Affordable Care Act, if Hobby Lobby were a church or a non-profit religious organization that had as its purpose the promotion of religious values, and if it primarily employed and served people along religious lines, it would be considered a “religious employer” and it would be completely exempted from the contraceptive-coverage requirement.  Even if it did not meet those stringent criteria, the company could still be exempt under the law if it were a non-profit institution that objected to contraceptive coverage for religious reasons, as do certain religious institutions of higher education.
But Hobby Lobby is neither a “religious employer” nor a non-profit institution.  It is a standard for-profit business corporation.  That is why the case is of such surpassing importance.  It threatens to carry over Citizens United’s transformation of corporations into “persons” for political spending purposes into the realm of religious worship and free exercise, with dramatic implications.



Center For American Progress has the real facts about Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby:
Dangerous implications
A holding that for-profit corporations have religious beliefs could not only harm employee access to adequate health care, but could also legalize religious-based discrimination while trampling on employees’ religious freedom.

More health care exemptions
More than 50 percent of Americans receive health insurance from their employers, and the employer health insurance rules are a major piece of the Affordable Care Act legislation and key to its success. The Hobby Lobby case and other cases currently in federal court are an attempt by those who were against the Affordable Care Act to slowly chip away at it, and contraception is just the beginning. If for-profit corporations can claim a religious exemption for contraception, they could then refuse to offer other types of health care coverage all because it conflicts with the owners’ “faith.” Consider the following examples:
  • Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in blood transfusions. A for-profit corporation owned by a devout Jehovah’s Witness could be able to refuse to cover blood transfusions for its employees.
  • Certain fundamentalist factions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are religiously opposed to the use of all vaccinations and could be exempt from covering vaccinations for their employees.
  • Christian Scientists eschew modern medicine entirely, believing instead in the healing power of prayer. A for-profit corporation owned by a Christian Scientist could decline to provide any health insurance based on these religious beliefs.
  • Scientologists are religiously opposed to psychiatry and drugs associated with psychiatry. A Scientologist owner of a for-profit corporation could use the corporation’s so-called “religious beliefs” to refuse coverage for psychiatric services for its employees.
  • Some evangelical Christians are opposed to the human papilloma virus, or HPV, vaccine, which prevents cervical cancer, because they believe the protection of the vaccine will increase promiscuity. A for-profit corporation owned by an evangelical Christian could request an exemption for his or her corporation, thus denying the corporation’s employees and their families’ access to the vaccine.
If the case goes Hobby Lobby's way, it'll be scary indeed. Yet another reason to boycott Hobby Lobby!

More on Loesch's deliberate falsehoods on the war on women, attacks on [Democratic/liberal] women, birth control, and pro-choice viewpoints:


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