Precious progressives ponder possible Supreme Court review of religious objections to ObamaCare

November 26, 2013

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[Since this was posted, SCOTUS has decided to take the Hobby Lobby case]

This brisk Portland morning I dragged myself into a local coffee shop to get three Americanos--stat!–and, coffeeas I was drizzling in the required milk product into the cups, overheard a gaggle of gals discussing ObamaCare. It seems the three 20-30 somethings were upset the US Supreme Court may decide today to take up cases that could exempt religious people from parts of the bill forcing them to cover abortifacent and birth control insurance coverage.  The convo went something like this,

Red head, ‘Well, I mean, they can have their religious beliefs…’

Short hair (finishing her sentence), ‘I suppose…’

Too much make up, ‘But should they be able to go line by line through it to pick what they want to follow? I mean…’

These women were in support of  forcing free people into a system which subordinates religious beliefs to obamacare priests arrested for protestthe collective ‘good.’ It made me sad they could speak so dismissively of religious beliefs while supporting a program, ObamaCare, which drops a cluster bomb into America’s health insurance and delivery system and thus far has been a spectacular failure. Had they been paying attention, these women would have known this aspect of ObamaCare has been fought hammer and tong since somebody actually read the bill.

SCOTUS could take up one of three cases challenging ObamaCare’s birth control insurance criteria, 

The three cases on which the court could act on Tuesday concern claims made by Mennonite, evangelical Christian and Roman Catholic families that run businesses.

“What’s really a focus of the case is protecting these people’s religious convictions,” said Kyle Duncan, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents evangelical Christians David and Barbara Green and their children in one of the cases. They own arts and crafts retailer Hobby obamacare hobby lobbyLobby Stores Inc and Mardel, a chain of Christian bookstores.

A key question will be whether individual religious liberty applies to a person’s company. If stare decisis means anything, the legal theory guiding Citizen’s United campaign contribution case should prevail in this one. If it does, get ready for the howls of protest from the left. 

Back at the coffee shop, it never occurred to these women they could pay for their own birth control pills for less than $10 a month instead of forcing people of faith to forsake their beliefs to accommodate others’ sex lives. I guess the old saw about about cows and milk has been changed to, ‘why should I pay for my birth control when I can force it from everyone else for free?