“Religion Is No Excuse for Bigotry Against Women”: Corporations Have No Soul, And They Certainly Don’t Have A Relationship With God
This Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in two consolidated cases, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, on the government’s authority to require employers to provide health care coverage that includes birth control and other pregnancy-related services under the Affordable Care Act.
The owners of two for-profit corporations, Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., claim their Christian religious beliefs justify withholding contraception coverage from their employees, never mind what their employees believe.
Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialities are not the only employers seeking the legal right to restrict their women employees’ access to birth control. Some 100 companies or nonprofit organizations — NOW calls them the Dirty 100 — have sued the United States Government for that same power.
Two issues raised by these lawsuits are receiving a lot of attention: First, can a corporation claim religious freedom under the First Amendment? Second, can a corporation block its employees from at least some forms of contraception on the grounds they are abortifacients? I’ll comment on those in a moment, but first I want to pause over a third issue: Can a corporation use its supposed Christian religion to justify discriminating against its women employees?
I want to propose that we lay to rest, once and for all, the tired old I’m-a-bigot-because-God-wants-it argument. Think about it. Proponents of discrimination have routinely used religion to justify their hurtful policies: two shameful examples are slavery in the United States and segregation in the Deep South.
More recently, religious claims were the driving force behind California’s Proposition 8, which sought to prohibit same-sex marriages. But these arguments have been thoroughly discredited. We have progressed as a society to the point where the use of religion to justify excluding, demeaning or discriminating against whole groups of people is roundly condemned, and rightly so. The idea of Hobby Lobby Stores, Conestoga Wood, or any of the Dirty 100 using religion as an excuse to block women’s access to birth control should be no less condemned.
As to whether Hobby Lobby Stores or Conestoga Wood can claim religious freedom SCOTUSblog summarized what’s at stake.
At the level of their greatest potential, the two cases raise the profound cultural question of whether a private, profit-making business organized as a corporation can “exercise” religion and, if it can, how far that is protected from government interference. The question can arise — and does, in these cases — under either the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause or under a federal law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed by Congress in 1993.
In a manner of speaking, these issues pose the question — a topic of energetic debate in current American political and social discourse — of whether corporations are “people.” The First Amendment protects the rights “of the people,” and the 1993 law protects the religious rights of “persons.” Do profit-making companies qualify as either?
As an aside, I have to wonder, if the Supreme Court decides that a corporation is a “person” with religious freedom under the First Amendment, where might that leave the status of women as “persons” with the right to equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment? In any event, Caroline Mala Corbin, a law professor at the University of Miami, succinctly rejected the idea of corporations as having the capacity for religious belief. As she said, “For-profit corporations do not and should not have religious rights. They have no soul, and they certainly don’t have a relationship with God.”
So, what about the claim that Hobby Lobby Stores and others in the Dirty 100 are making, that some forms of contraception are actually abortifacients? Two summaries by the National Partnership for Women & Families (here and here) are worth reading, and I’d be interested to know if you have the same reaction that I did when I read them.
These arguments would be laughable if the men running the Dirty 100 entities weren’t so deadly serious about blocking women’s access to life-saving health care. Because that’s what contraception is: life-saving. Unintended pregnancy is highly associated with infant and maternal mortality. Unintended pregnancy is also a significant risk factor for domestic violence.
So when these guys start saying that they have to, just have to, block women’s access to safe and effective contraception because they’re worried about the “lives” of the zygotes, I want to say: Seriously?
You are going to claim to be pro-life but ignore infant mortality? And maternal mortality? You are going to claim to be confused and worried about the fertilized egg, and the implantation, and the uterine wall, but ignore the intimate partner violence that accompanies unintended pregnancy? What business do you have talking about women’s bodies — as if we are not in the room — in the same way one might talk about, say, whether robots are more like androids or more like appliances? Seriously.
Let’s review some facts. Some 99 percent of sexually active women, including 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women, use contraception at some point. According to the National Partnership, an estimated 17.4 million women need subsidized services and supplies because they are unable to access or purchase contraceptive services and supplies on their own. And more than half of young adult women say cost concerns have led them to not use their birth control method as directed.
The Guttmacher Institute has found that about half (51 percent) of the 6.6 million pregnancies in the United States each year (3.4 million) are unintended. What’s more, the 19 percent of women at risk who use contraception inconsistently or incorrectly account for 43 percent of all unintended pregnancies.
Yet, in the face of these facts, Hobby Lobby and the others in the Dirty 100 want to restrict women’s access to this essential preventive care because of the claim that “zygotes are people too.”
If that’s the best they can do, they should surely lose this appeal. Of course, the case is before Chief Justice John Robert’s Supreme Court, which ushered in the era of corporations as people with the Citizens United case, and is widely considered the most politically active since the earliest days of our republic. So never say never. But whatever the Supreme Court does, I know what I’m not going to do: give my business or my money to Hobby Lobby or any of the other Dirty 100 that practice similar gender bigotry.
You can take action too: Click here to sign our petition telling them their bias is not acceptable.
By: Terry O’Neil, President, National Organization for Women; The Blog, The Huffington Post, March 21, 2014
“When The Dog Catches The Car”: Why Taking Over The Senate May Not Do Republicans Much Good
There’s an old story about a freshman member of the House who is getting shown around by a senior member on his first day, and the freshman asks about the other party. “I want to meet the enemy,” he says. “No, son,” says the old bull, “they’re the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.” I thought about that today as the prospect of a Republican takeover of the Senate becomes more of a possibility. If the GOP controlled both houses, would Republicans be able to present a united front against President Obama, one that might actually accomplish any practical goals? There are some clues in the maneuvering that’s going on right now over health care as Republicans look forward to this fall’s elections.
To begin with, we should acknowledge that a Republican takeover of the upper house is anything but a sure thing. The midterms are still seven and a half months away, and a lot could happen between now and then. There could be an economic crisis, or months of solid job growth, or an alien invasion, or who knows what. But barring anything dramatic, we know it is going to be very, very close. The map is just horrible for Democrats — not only are they defending 21 seats while Republicans are defending only 15, many of those Democratic seats are in conservative states such as Alaska, Arkansas and South Dakota, where any Democrat is going to be at a disadvantage. Combine that with the fact that the president’s party almost always loses seats in the sixth year of his presidency and with Obama’s relatively low approval ratings (43.3 percent in the latest Huffington Post/Pollster average), and it’s going to be a nail-biter. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball predicts the Senate on Election Day as 48 Democrats, 49 Republicans and three toss-ups.
If the Republicans do take the Senate, they won’t have a lot of time to savor the victory, because two years later they’re going to be the ones defending more seats (see Sean Trende’s analysis for more details). That makes it entirely possible, maybe even likely, that Republicans will have control of both houses for only two years, and after 2016 we’ll go back to the way things are now. So can they legislate during that time?
To a certain degree, the question is moot as long as Obama is president. Anything big and consequential on the Republican agenda would get vetoed. But you can accomplish a lot by thinking relatively small. The question is whether Republicans — or to be more specific, House Republicans — are capable of doing that.
I’ll point you to two articles written in the last couple of days. The first, by Dylan Scott in Talking Points Memo, discusses some of the ways Senate Republicans and the insurance industry are thinking about the possibility of a GOP Senate takeover. There’s a lot of discussion about some of the features of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that might be trimmed back. Could you cut or eliminate a tax on insurance policies? What about restoring cuts to Medicare Advantage? Might you introduce a lower-level “copper” plan to be sold on the exchanges, which would be less comprehensive than the gold, silver and bronze plans?
Now let’s turn to the House. Last night, The Post’s Robert Costa reported that House Republican leaders are coalescing around an alternative to the ACA that would do some of the things Republicans have been advocating for years: repeal the ACA, institute medical malpractice reform, let people buy insurance across state lines and a few other things.
See the difference? The senators accept that the ACA is law and are thinking about how they’d like to change it. The House members are coming up with another way to make a futile, symbolic shaking of their fists in the general direction of the White House. And this may offer a clue to how legislating would proceed in a Republican Congress. The House, still dominated by extremely conservative Republicans for whom any hint of compromise is considered the highest treason, could continue to pass one doomed bill after another, while the Senate tries to write bills that have at least some chance of ever becoming law.
And that would be just fine with Barack Obama. If he’s faced with both houses controlled by the opposition, there’s nothing he’d rather see than them fighting with each other and passing only unrealistic bills that he can veto without worrying about any backlash from the public.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; Published at The Plum Line, The Washington Post, March 17, 2014
“Obamacare Won’t Cause Society To Collapse”: Americans Choosing To Work Less Doesn’t Mean They’re Losing Their Jobs
A small war has erupted over the recent Congressional Budget Office report on the employment effects of the Affordable Care Act. Last week, the CBO itself felt compelled to offer a lengthy and detailed rebuttal to the spin that millions of Americans will “lose their jobs” as a result of Obamacare.
So let’s first be clear about what the CBO report concluded: As a result of the ACA, millions of Americans will choose to work less, if at all. That doesn’t mean that they will “lose their jobs.” Rather, it means that many will choose to give up working double-shifts just so they can make enough to afford health insurance or leave jobs they hate but have kept simply because they can’t maintain their coverage otherwise. In virtually all cases, these are decisions people are making for themselves and presumably welcome. As the CBO points out, as opposed to “losing their jobs,” in which case we’d all feel sad for them, friends and neighbors will invariably feel happy for these individuals.
But, of course, not everyone. To conservatives, the CBO report demonstrates what they have said about Obamacare – and about the government dole generally – all along: It creates “perverse incentives” encouraging people not to work.
The conservative argument is based on several underlying assumptions, like a DirecTV ad: When you give things to people, they work less. When they work less, they’re worse off. When they’re worse off, they demand more. When they demand more, liberals give them more. And when liberals give them more, society collapses. Don’t have society collapse: Stop the Affordable Care Act.
Of course, the CBO report did in fact find that providing this health coverage will induce millions of people to work less or not at all. So let’s look a little more closely at this syllogism.
It’s undoubtedly true that if you give things to some people, they’ll work less. But it’s not true in all cases. Unfortunately, this sort of assertion is a staple of anti-government rhetoric: For any government expenditure, it can be shown to have enriched some deadbeat or rip-off artist. But so has the derivatives market. Meanwhile, plenty of people work more when you give them more.
In fact, most conservative policies these days are based on the idea that certain people need to be given more to induce them to work harder and to produce more. Of course, those highly-sensitive individuals are the rich and corporate executives, who, without more money (including from the government) simply wouldn’t keep working and creating. By the same logic, though, we should extend even more benefits to more working people – perhaps even raise wages at the low end – to encourage them to work. But for some reason low-income Americans, unlike the wealthy, are presumed to work best if we take incentives and benefits away from them.
Moreover, as the CBO pointed out, there is indeed a “perverse” work disincentive in Obamacare – but it’s the opposite of what conservatives have taken the report to say. Rather, it’s that, as people’s incomes rise, they get less support – a “tax,” in effect, on work. And, of course, taxes are bad. So we actually should be less stingy about giving even better health care benefits to even more people.
Of course, we’d need to pay for those expanded benefits, which appears to be the real point of the “collapse of our culture” argument – not so much that people won’t work as that people who do work will wind up having to support them. But there’s then an obvious way to pay for these benefits if you want to encourage work: tax unearned income (which accrues, by definition, to nonworkers) at a higher rate than we tax earned income. And if giving people money or benefits for which they didn’t have to work encourages sloth, then we’d best start taxing away all inheritance post-haste, as well.
We don’t, of course, because that would tax primarily the rich. But most parents want to leave something behind for their children, because we know that getting a leg up is usually the way to climb even higher. Few people throw their kids out of the house with no means of support, on the grounds that that will make them more successful. Nevertheless, many argue that helping other people’s children only cripples them as opposed to, well, helping them.
It is incumbent upon liberals to assert not just that children “deserve” health care or that people “shouldn’t have to” work grueling hours and still not make ends meet. Such assertions are, after all, merely subjective. But if investments in human capital actually improve total productivity, then the only argument against is that “the poor you always have with you” actually is a commandment, not a condemnation. And various studies (such as this and this) have shown – not surprisingly – that health care is one of the better bets for boosting productivity and workforce engagement.
And productivity, after all, is really the issue. No one longs for the days when people had to toil every waking moment to scrape out subsistence livings, instead of a modern world where a 40-hour work week can enable one to produce more economic value than the greatest medieval monarchs could even dream of. So do we really think it’s good if more and more Americans feel compelled to work 80 hours a week just to make ends meet? Would it mean our economy, or our morals, were headed downhill if more Americans decided they didn’t need to work two shifts every day but could get by, having all they want, on only one?
In short, it isn’t clear that more work is self-evidently good. Or that society will collapse if people work a little less – let alone if it makes them more productive overall – because they have health care. Just as it didn’t collapse when we moved to a 40-hour workweek and ended child labor. But it’s possible. After all, when I can’t get cable, I do get angry.
By: Eric B. Schnurer, U. S. News and World Report, February 22, 2014
“Self-Awareness Is A Virtue”: Karl Rove Has Taken The Practice Of Projecting One’s Flaws Onto One’s Foes To A Level Of Performance Art
Despite his missteps, Republican strategist Karl Rove still has a weekly column in the Wall Street Journal, and his latest submission is a gem that shines bright.
Most of the 700-word op-ed complains about the Affordable Care Act, but it’s the conclusion that captures a failure of self-awareness that was unintentionally hilarious.
Mr. Obama’s pattern is to act, or fail to act, in a way that will leave his successor with a boatload of troubles. The nation’s public debt was equal to roughly 40% of GDP when Mr. Obama took office. At last year’s end it was 72% of GDP. […]
Then there’s Medicare, whose Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will go bankrupt in 2026. For five years, Mr. Obama has failed to offer a plan to restore Medicare’s fiscal health as he is required by the law establishing Medicare Part D. When Medicare goes belly-up, he will be out of office.
From the record number of Americans on food stamps to the worst labor-force participation rate since the 1970s to rising political polarization to retreating U.S. power overseas and increasing Middle East chaos and violence, Mr. Obama’s successor – Republican or Democratic – will inherit a mess.
So, let me get this straight. Karl Rove, a former deputy of chief of staff in the Bush/Cheney White House, is worried about a president who will leave his successor with high deficits, a weak economy, a divided electorate, and violence in the Middle East.
Did he even read this before submitting it? Did it not occur to him how ironic his complaints might seem, given that his former boss turned a massive surplus into a massive deficit, saw the economy suffer a near-catastrophic crash, and left two disastrous wars for Obama to clean up?
As for the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, one wonders if Rove realizes that it was Obama, not Bush, who extended the program’s fiscal health?
The larger takeaway, however, is that Karl Rove has taken the practice of projecting one’s flaws onto one’s foes to a level of performance art.
It’s a pattern I started documenting a few years ago, but which Rove somehow manages to add data points to with alarming regularity.
* Rove has tried to buy elections, so he accuses Democrats of trying to buy elections.
* Rove has relied on scare tactics, so he accuses Democrats of relying on scare tactics.
* Rove embraced a permanent campaign, so he accuses Democrats of embracing a “permanent campaign.”
* Rove relied on pre-packaged, organized, controlled, scripted political events, so he accuses Democrats of relying on “pre-packaged, organized, controlled, scripted” political events.
* Rove snubbed news outlets that he considered partisan, so he accuses Democrats of snubbing news outlets that they consider partisan.
* Rove had a habit of burying bad news by releasing it late on Friday afternoons, so he accuses Democrats of burying bad news by releasing it late on Friday afternoons.
But despite all of this, for Rove to complain about a president bequeathing high deficits, a struggling economy, and a mess in the Middle East breaks new ground in failures of self-awareness.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 14, 2014
“The GOP’s Health Crisis”: The Republican Party’s Worst Nightmare Is Coming True
Oh dear. The Republican Party’s worst nightmare is coming true. Obamacare is working.
The news that nearly 1.2 million people signed up last month for insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges is highly inconvenient for GOP candidates nationwide. It looks as if the party’s two-word strategy for the fall election — bash Obamacare — will need to be revised.
Wednesday’s status report on the health-insurance reforms was by far the best news for Democrats and the Obama administration since the program’s incompetent launch. January was the first month when new enrollments surpassed expectations, as the balky HealthCare.gov Web site began functioning more or less as intended.
Cumulatively, 3.3 million people had chosen insurance plans through the state and federal exchanges by the end of January. That is fewer than the administration had originally hoped but well above the predictions of critics who believed — or hoped — that the program would never succeed. The Congressional Budget Office projects that 6 million people will have chosen plans through Obamacare when the initial enrollment period ends March 31, down from a pre-launch estimate of 7 million. Not bad at all.
The numbers are even more encouraging when you look more closely. The proportion of young people — from 18 and 34 — who chose insurance plans through the exchanges increased slightly to 27 percent, compared with an average of 24 percent in previous months. This is important because premiums would have to rise if not enough young, healthy people enrolled.
The administration had hoped the percentage of young enrollees would reach about 40 percent. But the January figure — and the rising trend — should put to rest any notion that the whole program could go down the drain in an actuarial “death spiral.” Administration officials are convinced this won’t happen.
According to the January report, about 80 percent of those signing up for Obamacare are eligible for subsidies to help them pay for insurance. The administration believes, but does not have the data to prove, that most of the new enrollees were previously uninsured.
These figures do not include the additional people who have been determined newly eligible for insurance under the federal-state Medicaid program. Overall, the program appears to be doing exactly what it was designed to do: make health insurance accessible and affordable for those who truly need it.
The Affordable Care Act could be doing even more if Republican governors such as Rick Perry of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida were not doing all they could to sabotage the program. But even in states that refused to set up their own health-insurance exchanges or to expand Medicaid eligibility, growing numbers of the uninsured are obtaining coverage.
Politically, this is terrible news for Republicans who hoped that the botched Web site launch and President Obama’s misleading “you can keep your insurance” pledge would be the gifts that kept on giving.
Bashing Obamacare will always have resonance for the GOP’s conservative base. But if you’re trying to win the votes of independents, it’s more profitable to target a failed program than a successful one.
Critics will doubtless try to blame Obamacare for anything bad that happens to anyone’s health insurance before the November election. But all of this is just noise without the central narrative of a “failed program.”
Attack ads against vulnerable Democratic senators, such as Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, are already trying to paint Obamacare as a character defect — the president and his supporters “lied” when they said everyone could keep their insurance. The response from Democrats should be to shift the focus to the actual program and its impact. Imperiled incumbents can point to constituents who are benefiting from the Affordable Care Act in life-changing ways.
If you assume that Affordable Care Act enrollment remains on its current trajectory, the February numbers should look even better. Polls consistently show that even if voters have mixed views about the health-care reforms, most do not want to see them repealed. By the fall, the whole Obamacare-is-a-disaster line of attack could sound stale and irrelevant.
Republicans may even have to take the drastic step of saying what they advocate, rather than harping on what they oppose. Is there a GOP plan to cover those with preexisting conditions? To cover the working poor? Is expanding access to health insurance really such an awful thing?
Sorry, I didn’t catch what you said.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 13, 2014
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