We couldn’t agree more with Nevada’s senior senile Sen. Harry Reid.
“When it comes to a woman’s personal health, that is a decision she has to make. Bosses shouldn’t be in the same room. They shouldn’t even be in the same ZIP code,” said Reid.
Neither should those bosses, when they are the owners of a closely held corporation, be forced to pay for, aid and/or abet what their religion deems a mortal sin — i.e. the use of four of the 20 approved birth control prescriptions that are considered abortifacients, a drug that causes a fertilized egg to abort.
That is what the Supreme Court recently ruled in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby 5-4 opinion that allows employers of such closely held corporations to not be forced to pay for health insurance that covers specific birth control methods, as required by the rules of ObamaCare written by Health and Human Services and not Congress.
“It is a horrible decision,” said Reid, D-Highest Bidder. “Certainly the worst in the last 25 years.”
Interestingly, the opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito was not based on the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, but on an act of Congress called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1993.
That act was expressly intended to counter a Supreme Court opinion, written by Alito 24 years ago, that said employees who were fired for using peyote as a part of their religious ceremony were not entitled to unemployment benefits.
Reid not only voted for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, he was a co-sponsor.
Reid has been signaling his support for a bill by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., called Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act, but dubbed in the vernacular of congressional liberals as the Not My Boss’s Business Act.
It would restore the requirement for employers to pay for all approved forms of birth control free of charge to the employee.
Never one to pass up an opportunity for an embarrassing gaffe, Reid at one point told reporters, “The one thing we are going to do during this work period, sooner rather than later, is to ensure that women’s lives are not determined by virtue of five white men. This Hobby Lobby decision is outrageous, and we’re going to do something about it. People are going to have to walk down here and vote. And if they vote with the five men on the Supreme Court, I think they’ll have to be treated unfavorably come November for the elections.”
Alito’s opinion was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, who the last time we checked is black.
It was Reid who once said of Thomas, “I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. … I think that his opinions are poorly written. I just don’t think that he’s done a good job as a Supreme Court justice.” Who is embarrassing now?
Despite the left’s branding-iron-hot rhetoric, the court did nothing to deny anything from anyone. The justices merely said the government may not force Christians to violate their consciences and actively engage in an act they consider sinful. Employees are free to purchase abortion pills or buy insurance that covers it.
Yet, Sen. Murray spouted this nonsense, “I hope Republicans will join us to revoke this court-issued license to discriminate and return the right of Americans to make their own decision about their own health care and their own bodies.”
In fact, Alito wrote, “The most straightforward way of doing this (providing contraceptives) would be for the Government to assume the cost of providing the four contraceptives at issue to any women who are unable to obtain them under their health-insurance policies due to their employers’ religious objections. This would certainly be less restrictive of the plaintiffs’ religious liberty …”
Kick the boss out of your bedroom? Sure. Better yet, allow individuals to deduct health insurance cost from their income tax, not just businesses. Kick the boss out of health care entirely. — TM
Thanks, Harry for being there for all the people.
Shame on you Dean Heller for voting against the bill, sometimes you make me sick.
I will remember in November ’16..
You maybe not want your boss in your bedroom but you want your employer to pay for your birth control.
Good article. Those who say they want “the boss out of my bedroom but I want him to pay for my ‘morning after’ pill” are literally talking out of both sides of their mouths.
The first sentence of the third paragraph leaves the door open to absolute craziness. “Neither should those bosses, when they are the owners of a closely held corporation, be forced to pay for, aid and/or abet, ….”
Who is to determine what is a “closely held corporation”? I suppose we could all agree that a corporation owned by a single family (not more than 3 or 4 generations please) should be able to choose to follow their religious convictions. Lets go further – say 5, 10, maybe 15 families in joint ownership. Then lets consider Microsoft (a gross exaggeration, I know, but you should be able to get my point). After all, congress sets the limit – and can change it whenever the political wind changes direction.
Despite my objection, I would agree with T.M. if there were an absolute guarantee that the federal government would pay the bill if a “closely held” company declined. But hey, isn’t that “insurance” too? And who would pay “insurance” premiums? Individual tax payers (humans) – excluding of course business entities considered “people” in our slightly complex tax code.
AB