Religious freedom, contraception, and law
Lifted from a note from Beverly Mann in response to a query of mine, as a note of interest:
Here’s a link to a long Politico article on those cases and on the prospects of their success:
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=67901EA4-2955-4FD7-A52E-1E8CB0EA8E56
Apparently, it looks like the Supreme Court eventually will hear two or three of these cases, probably all at one time, and draw some line about which organizations and for-profit companies are entitled to be exempt from the contraception part of the mandate. Meanwhile, as legal challenges unfold, public discourse has expanded to cover various online platforms, including debates around the regulation of 안전한 파워볼사이트, which have grown in popularity and raised concerns about safety and legality in unregulated spaces. But mainly, these lawsuits concern a federal statute called The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which provides religious protections for these groups beyond what the Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment requires. That statute was passed in reaction to a Supreme Court opinion that defined the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause more narrowly than a majority of Congress thought was appropriate.
The Politico article gives a pretty detailed rundown on this.
Beverly
Beverly
we can hope the Court finds that religious freedom applies to the employees, not to the “company” paying them.
i shouldn’t get into this “debate” as my own ideas are very different from… yours.
Still, I think the idea that a church or whatever can impose it’s “religion” on employees is ridiculous even from the point of view of the church.
as for what kind of compensation a “company” can offer (medical insurance is still not a “right”), i would imagine that is still pretty much a “free enterprise” issue and not a “freedom of religion” issue.
Hmmm…coberly, tell that to Liberty University who brought the suit.
This seems a pretty neutral comment to me, pointing to the Supremes on the issues in the pipeline.
DAn
can’t tell which part I should tell Liberty.
I got beat up on this issue once before.
I thought that insurance was not a good way to pay for “everyday” predictable, not catastrophic, expenses.
The ladies here convinced me I was a male chauvinist pig. And the gentlemen convinced me I was an ignorant superstitious religious fundamentalist idiot.
So I have to admit I favor a “single payer” government insurance paid for by a dedicated, transparent, capped tax. Then the people can decide, through their elected representatives of course, what they want to pay for, and, of course, pay for it.
Dale on a statistical basis heart attacks are predictable. Should the prophylactic costs of reducing their incidence be similar excluded from insurance? Almost all people my age start having changes in vision, even people with lifetime ‘perfect’ vision find themselves holding the newspaper farther away or having trouble reading in low light. Now some of these folks need a pair of ‘readers’ from Wal-Mart and maybe a upgrade in bulb wattage on their reading lamp, others find themselves needing expensive corrective lens just to function. But the condition of becoming more farsighted in later middle age is near universal. The question being one of scale and possible complications. Complications further complicated by a complex of lifestyle choices, for example eating the right combination of foods might delay or prevent that heart attack or mitigate the early need to buy readers. Aspirin and Vitamin K anyone?
At some point we need to take a hard look at why ladies control of their lady parts and the consequences thereof are just predictable and so not insureable and men’s choices of what substances they put in their mouths just ‘medical conditions’. At some point you approach the argument that the only person in Earth’s history that deserved health insurance was Jack La Lane, and that only against meteor strikes and lightning.
On the other hand you mostly can’t charge your green veggies to your insurance plan, self-help is not an oxy-moron. But let’s make sure that all choices are treated equally and that some plutocrats choice to smoke cigars, drink brandy and eat three inch steaks from Chris Morton’s Steakhouse is not a covered condition but others choices aren’t.
Bruce
i’ll go back and finish your comment when i get over being mad for you misunderstanding “predictable” in the sense of birth control pills as the same as predictable in the case of heart attacks.
you can choose to grossly misunderstand something if it helps to make your point, but it makes me grouchy.
back
my point didn’t have a damn thing to do with womens issues or “preventable” conditions like heart attacks.
it was simply a point about whether it made sense to “insure” yourself for “small” things you could pay for out of your pocket.
it wasn’t a moral statement but a question of practicality.
it happens that me and Jack LaLanne have a lot in common so I am not altogether happy about an insurance bill that reflects the cost of everyone else’s bad habits and hypochondria, but I did say I “supported” a single payer … dedicated tax… with the implication, i would think, that i would pay the same tax as everyone else… has something to do with my patriotism.
i would hope that “everybody” paying the tax would lead the people to democratically decide what was worth paying for and what might be better left to individual discretion.
hope. not expect.
“I thought that insurance was not a good way to pay for “everyday” predictable, not catastrophic, expenses”
Dale. Given the context of the post how could my contrast of contraceptives vs heart attack prophylactics be unfair?
And how can you maintain that it didn’t have a “damn point” to do with “women’s issues”? Particularly in light of the last statement of your first comment? Double particularly since your second comment acknowledges that similar comments got you in trouble with feminists?
Plus your treatment of both “predictable” and “cheap” makes ME grumpy. Birth control isn’t that cheap to start with, and you (perhaps inadvertently) get close to the bluenose position that if even committed couples don’t want to have unscheduled pregnancies they should give up marital relations.
Men of a certain age at risk of heart attacks are often prescribed blood thinners. Which may be as cheap and easy as an over the counter 81mg aspirin (aka baby aspirin) but might be some expensive medicine under patent. But odd as it may seem to those of means, or even employed, there are people for whom even prescription baby aspirin, thiamine, vit-d and iron, though all available over the counter, are grateful that they are covered under their prescription plan.
Bruce
I am gasping for breath over your amazing leaps of intuition which have nothing to do with what i said and everything to do with the way you link things together in your narrative of everything.
let me at least try to suggest some distinction between “predictability” as in “i can predict that i will need to buy a new tube of toothpaste this month” and “statistical predictability” in which actuaries can predict a certain number of heart attacks will occur among a certain large population this year.
the words may be the same. the concepts are incommensurable.
Then, a kind reader who hadn’t already mounted his horse Agenda and was halfway out the barn before reading the rest of the sentence might have noticed that “the ladies convinced me..”
Birth control pills are cheaper than heart surgery. AND more predictable. Well within the reach of even a “lower middle class” budget. But as I tried to indicate, I have given up that argument in favor of what i like to call “the real situation.” Which is both that “some women” perhaps “poor women” will not take birth control if they have to pay for it, and the consequences will be more expensive for both them and me. And moreover, political reality suggests that i can’t win that argument as long as “middle class” women think it’s a question of women’s rights, so I resign myself to paying for everybody else’s “natural function,” and hope they don’t discover that eating is a natural function with health implications and demand that i (insurance) pay for their grocery bills.
now, someone that knew my rueful sense of humor (i come from a long line of gallows humorists) would understand that i was conceding the battle, but reserved my right to my own opinion of the absurdity of the arguments.
haven’t had a blue nose since I realized my mother was not a virgin.
and of course it’s not the cost of the aspirin, but the cost of the damn doctor visits, that requires insurance.
at some point, the peope in a democracy may decide that to keep the costs of health insurance at a level THEY can afford to pay, they will ask even heart patients to pay for their own aspirin. or they may not, know that some folks just won’t do it unless they get it free as a “right.”
and then I am afraid that Mitt will turn out to have been right after all. The American working class did not use to see itself as “victims” who gave up all responsibility for themselves. But our progressive leaders seem determined to lead us into the fold.
Oh, darn, now I am a right wing Republican. Which is hard on me, since those sheep think I am a communist.
an insight perhaps
Bruce finds the predictability of toothpaste purchases the same as the predictability of heart attacks
because he views the world from the standpoint of “government”… we are all in this together and so any money you have to pay for toothpaste comes out of the national budget the same way any money you pay for heart attacks.
but that’s getting ahead of the game. we still live in a country where individuals are responsible for “ordinary purchases” and even the “ordinary purchase” of health insurance.
I don’t think the latter is wise, and i especially don’t think it is wise when the government mandates the purchase of insurance.
but being grounded in something i like to call “present reality” i have to start with the “fact” that we still pay for our own toothpaste… and not count aggregate toothpaste purchases against the “government budget.” so far.
Bruce, while I don’t know today’s prices, i used to know what birth control cost. And even though I was dirt poor at the time, I paid for it because having another baby would have been more than I could afford.
I did not, as you seem to think, tell my wife it was her problem and she should get a job and pay for it herself.
I don’t like being called a bluenose because I think insurance should not be the way to pay for “small expenses you can budget for.” I am all for welfare to pay for the birth control needs, and aspirin, of those who can’t afford to pay for it themselves.
I am not all in favor of a garbage grinder approach that turns every issue into another reason to protect the poor middle class from having to pay for anything themselves if they can convince themselves it is a “right.”
but i will also note that you and i are on the same side in substantive issues… including this one. don’t make me play uke so you can demonstrate your martial arts to the fans.