The advent of an active conflict between some advocates for women's rights and some advocates for the religious rights of employers is a sign of the times. The women's movement, if it be that, which wants to charge the public purse and tax-payers for recreational sex expenses (the Fluck Doctrine) has gone to bizarre doctrines of law. The original movement of Second Wave Feminism (1960s to 1980s) in North America coud in its day come up with some corkers, but these activist women weren't entirely statist-minded, as I recall. As more and more young women joined that movement and the Third Wave formed in the 1990s continuing into the present, they had an opportunity to found trusts, endowed funds, and foundations to provide abortions to any women who after considering her options, choose to abort her unborn without coercion either way. This woud have been a radical non-statist approach, but beyond the social imaginary of the women of those times. The willingness to form communal associations to secure to all women and any women free access to abortion, without coercion but really free choice, just wasn't present. Besides being the period most likely to be considered a women's day in history, it was also saddled with the ethos of the Me Generation — which meant mature communal associations coudn't evolve under women's guidance to solve the abortion issue. Instead, in Canada with no law at all to govern the situation, the freedom to exercize her sphere sovereignty over her own body and to take responsiblity for herself, with wise financial planning ($1 a month woud have endowed such foundations massively over time), thru sisterly organization for future exigencies, but that chance was lost. There was no sense of sisterly communal calling in that regard. Instead, go into politics and make the state omnicompetent over women's bodies and medical doctor's procedures.
So the responsiblity passed to the state, however reluctant, but before that possibility coud be made legal and realistic, the aborters for hire appeared on the scene. In Canada, it was the mass abortionists under the leadership of the non-woman (must I say it?), Dr Henry Morgantaler, who found a managerdial-capitalist niche for himself. In the USA, it was the agency founded on genocide of the poor, Planned Parenthood, that came to occupy that niche most widely. They exemplify how it was determined, the structuration of what so many women woud have to resort over the decades afterward. This put the means of getting abortions out of the hands of the broad spectrum of women and made them captive, lacking their own network of foundation-funded clinics, to Morgantaler Abortion Clinics and Planned Parenthood's one-way "counselling." The latter soon learned in many places to get its money from state and Federal government. So, the Fluck logic is simply vacuum-logic from the detritus of the statist solution to everything female.
Now comes a group of Christian employers who don't want to be absorbed into this alien logic; it seems thedy don't want solutions to the problem of accessible abortion care, but they certainly can't catch up with the enormity that the Fluck Doctrine enshrined in the Affordable Health Care Act now imposes on them. They woud like help from the courts, but it's hi-ly unlikely they will get any.
— Lawt, refWrite Frontpage juridics newspotter, analyst, columnist
Washington Post (Jan22,2k13)
Christian employers challenging contraceptive provision of health care law, reject idea of any penalties
Joe Raedle/Getty Images - As Supremes refuse relief to Christian employers who don't want to pay for employee's contraception under Obama's Affordable Care Act, protesters hold signs and pray during a gathering billed as the “Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally” in MIami in June 2012.
Enjoy the festivities, President Obama, and while you’re on the grand stage Monday, it might be wise to make nice with the assembled Supreme Court justices.
The next legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act is moving quickly to the high court, and bringing potent questions about religious freedom, gender equality and corporate “personhood.”
The issue is the health-care law’s requirement that employers without a specific exemption must provide workers with insurance plans that cover a full range of birth-control measures and contraceptive drugs.
Inclusion of the no-cost contraceptive coverage for female workers has always been a controversial part of the legislation. It has now sparked more than 40 lawsuits around the nation involving more than 110 individuals, colleges, hospitals, church-affiliated nonprofits and private companies.
The cases involving those with religious affiliations are in limbo, as the Obama administration works on regulations that might provide a compromise. In a case involving two such institutions — Wheaton College in Illinois and Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina — a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is requiring administration officials to report by mid-February about the new rule, which is to be issued by spring.
By Duncan’s count, there are 14 cases filed by business owners who say the law forces them to choose between running their companies and following their religious beliefs. In nine of those cases, courts have issued injunctions until the conflicts can be decided on their merits.
The cases differ by what the business owners say they are willing to provide — some say all contraceptives would violate their religious beliefs, others object only to abortifacients such as the “morning-after pill” and intrauterine devices. But all rely on protections in the First Amendment regarding free exercise of religion and in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
The 1993 act prohibits the federal government from imposing a “substantial burden” on a person’s exercise of religion unless there is a “compelling governmental interest” and the measure is the least-restrictive method of achieving the interest.
No court of appeals has reached the merits of the challenges, but two — the 7th and 8th circuits in Chicago and St. Louis respectively — have granted business owners injunctions, and two — the 6th in Cincinnati and the 10th in Denver — have denied them.
And along the way, those decisions give a pretty clear indication of the fight ahead.
The most promising for the challengers is a ruling by a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit. Cyril and Jane Korte, owners of K & L Contractors, said the new law offends their Roman Catholic beliefs. They wanted to replace the insurance program they offered their workers, which they found provided contraceptive services, with one that did not.
