I have argued before against the opposition to the
requirement of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that insurance plans offer
contraception services to women, by businesses and organizations that object to
having to provide such services on religious grounds (First Amendment Freedom
of Religion).
The issue is now before the Supreme Court in a case
involving the owners of The Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties. These
companies want to be “exempted” from having to offer plans that provide
contraception services that they feel are actually “abortions”.
To be fair, Hobby Lobby will provide some contraception
services (unlike Catholic institutions) but not services such as the “morning
after pill” like Plan B.
In discussing this issue with my wife, she felt that
businesses or business owners should be able to behave according to their own
wishes and beliefs. I replied that they can; they can offer health insurance
mandated by law or they can opt out of offering health insurance altogether and
pay a small fine BUT they cannot be “exempted” from certain provisions of the
healthcare law based on their religious beliefs.
If the court allows certain companies to be exempted from
certain plan requirements who is to say that some company owners wouldn’t want
to be exempted from blood transfusions, psychiatric care, vaccinations or
anesthesia because of some weird religious belief as argued in the New York
Times editorial of 3/23/2014 titled: CRYING WOLF ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
Remember what happened in Arizona just recently where the
legislature there wanted to pass a law giving individuals and businesses the
right to refuse services to same-sex couples because of their religious
beliefs?
Yes, the First Amendment to our Constitution protects
individual religious freedom by prohibiting the government from establishing a
national religion or even favoring one religion over another and in this case,
the owners of the two companies are not prohibited in any way, the practice of
their religion.
On the other hand, a business is not an individual with
religious beliefs.
In my mind, the owners of these companies are trying to
impose their religious beliefs on their employees and thus impinging on the
employees’ beliefs (or non-beliefs) and also denying those employees health
services that they may want or need.
Our Constitution mandates the Separation of Church and State
and the Affordable Care Act is a government law passed by Congress and signed
by our president and as such is immune from any religious challenges because it
does not in any way, impact any individual’s religious freedom and the practice
thereof…the law does not force anyone to use contraceptive services while the
businesses in question want to prohibit employees from using said services.
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