To those people who think they are changing the course of history by refusing to shop at Hobby Lobby because of its immoral lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act—take a well-earned break. Thanks to your efforts, Hobby Lobby’s sales grew by 18 percent in the past several months. As the individually-owned retail giant faced the Supreme Court under the watchful eye of the American people, the consolidated entity that is the American media drew a picture for the average voter: one where the religious regime once again attempted to prevent progress by forcing a solidary belief upon the masses. I agree that having contraception is good and necessary for the health of women and society in general. However, the fundamental differences between the different kinds of anti-pregnancy medication establish grounds for Hobby Lobby to be allowed to not provide the three kinds of contraceptives that they are opposed to. In fact, it would actually be more beneficial to the public to have Hobby Lobby do the alternative: Pay the yearly fine of $500 million and allow their employees to use their own health insurer of choice if they feel they need Plan B.
When the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, it created a mandate for all U.S. companies to provide health care for their employees. In and of itself, this did not create a new problem for businesses, as previous health insurance laws dictated that business with more than 50 employees provide health insurance. The problem for businesses in regard to health insurance stemmed from its forcing companies to provide contraceptives if they didn’t do so before, and the ACA is ambiguous in regard to what contraception is, exactly. According to the law, it’s any kind of birth control that is approved and regulated by the FDA and requires a prescription. It’s not shocking that the public is confused—the ACA is over two thousand pages long, I bet the people who wrote it are confused too.
The reason that Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius became the focus of controversy is not because Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties (the other company filing the suit that no one seems to care about) denied contraceptives to their employees, it is because they don’t want to be forced to offer “Plan B type” contraceptives. Boom, myth shattered.
While there are at least 47 other cases that have been filed by other companies who want to deny all contraceptives, the only one that the Supreme Court has decided to take was Hobby Lobby’s — this is to set a precedent regarding the religious status of for-profit corporations. The Supreme Court’s decision is an easy one: Either Hobby Lobby pays an estimated $500 million dollars a year in fines and does not offer the contraceptives they are opposed to, or the Supreme Court completely re-interprets the first amendment to the constitution and changes the meaning of “religious conviction.”
Modern Christianity teaches against abortion and terminating an already conceived child—not against preventing children. One of the basic principles of Christianity is not to have children like a baby machine, but to have however many children you can support and raise to be good Christians. You get what you get and if you do a good job, you can get some more.
In this case, the debate on birth control as health care fundamentally shifts; you are no longer reprimanding a company for not “gettin’ with the times,” but as an individual, you start to consider the options available and how a compromise can be reached that will benefit everyone. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties are willing to pay the fine so that their employees, the ones who absolutely cannot live without their Plan B, can go to another insurer or another organization and get the money they need to pay for that.
If we shrink the issue down and make it local, I don’t believe we necessarily have as big a problem as the media is trying to feed us. In fact, we see even bigger picture issues rising up—issues such as the pure gender discrimination in contraceptives. No law to this point, not even the ACA, included male contraceptives. Perhaps we can dig deeper– why are pharmaceutical companies only focused on developing female contraceptives, when it makes so much more sense to unload the gun, rather than shoot at a bulletproof vest.
At this point in history, all rational individuals acknowledge that birth control is necessary for a healthy and happy society. However, rational individuals also know that if they forget to take their birth control pills, then they are also likely to forget to take their morning after pills. At this point, the rational individual would realize that the risk of having a child weighs over the pleasure of having sex and would do one of four things: condition themselves to take their daily contraceptive pills, get an IUD or another long term contraceptive, only sleep with dudes who wear condoms or do nothing about it and possibly get pregnant.
We know that the only contraceptive that works 100 percent of the time is abstinence, but since we are also a society of highly progressed, young individuals, we refuse to not have sex. We also know that working as a community and compromising is essential to any kind of advancement, improvement, or progress, which is why I believe we are willing to bite the bullet with Hobby Lobby—$500 million never hurt anyone.
