Ashley Pierce is a political science freshman and Mustang Daily conservative columnist.
It was only a matter of time until Sandra Fluke waltzed right into one of my articles. Fortunately for the reader, she has taken a back seat to larger issues — thank God, or this article would have been way too long.
The White House issued a statement Friday that the contraception coverage ruling, part of “Obamacare,” would have exceptions for churches and non-profit religious organizations. These institutions would instead have the insurer directly pay for employees’ birth control.
However, what about businesses that don’t fall into the category of non-profits or churches? They will not be receiving the exemption and are still expected to cover employees’ birth control. This means even if a CEO is morally against birth control, he or she will still have to pay for it, such as Hobby Lobby CEO David Green, who has taken Obama’s mandate to court.
According to Fluke (she is just such a loving and tolerant woman), “Some of the folks who are continuing to object to this policy are actually worried about employers who are private companies, not religiously affiliated employers in any way, but the boss has a particular religious concern and they want to be able to deny their employees particular types of health care.”
That’s right Ms. Fluke — and do you know why the boss can “deny” his employees certain kinds of healthcare? Because they have the option of working for him. If the employees at Hobby Lobby want their contraception covered they can quit and find another job. Contraception is not a natural right, for that matter neither is healthcare but that’s an argument for another time.
How dare the government tell a business owner they have to cover anything for an employee and especially something they believe is wrong. That should be the business owner’s choice and no one else’s.
Now I’m not saying contraception is some evil item. Heck, I don’t want kids until I’m 30 — darn straight birth control will be my best friend those first few years of marriage — but if someone does believe birth control is a sin, who is the government to tell them to supply it for their employees? The guilt that would come with that, I imagine, would be sickening. That’s like telling someone who is pro-life they have to pay for their employees’ abortions (don’t worry folks, I’m sure that law will be coming soon).
For the record, Hobby Lobby more specifically objects to supplying employees with emergency contraceptives, which follow along the lines of morning-after pills, which some people do equate with abortions. Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter — if that’s how someone feels, they shouldn’t have to pay for someone else to have access to the pills.
It doesn’t matter, however, if it’s emergency contraceptives or regular ol’ birth control — heck, it could be candy that a CEO morally objects to — they shouldn’t have to cover it (though if the government is setting a mandate that candy must be covered by health insurance we have a whole new set of problems).
The government has simply crossed the line of becoming too involved with businesses by telling them how to run it and what they must cover. Besides the argument of the healthcare bill infringing on religious freedom, it infringes on the individual rights of all business owners in America.
It’s not as if Hobby Lobby forbids their employees from buying contraceptives or even emergency contraceptives. For heaven’s sake, no one is losing their right to buy birth control (contrary to how Ms. Fluke likes to make it sound). If anyone is losing rights, it’s business owners — their rights to have morals and values, let alone run a business as they see fit.
And so Ms. Fluke can sit at Obama’s right hand and smile at what a change she’s made in the world, bringing such wonderful empowerment for women (what ever would women do without the government paying for our pills? *Gasp* Actually support ourselves?!), but in reality she has set about the motion of individual freedoms being lost and the continuing degradation of American society.
Good luck, David Green of Hobby Lobby. Our future freedoms will be decided by the precedence your case sets. Win it. Win it big.