The government is hemorrhaging money defending a regulation it will never enforce against the New York Archdiocese.
Bottom line: If you’re a religious individual, and you decide to enter the marketplace, and you hire people of all faiths, then you have to leave your religious baggage behind and follow the same rules that apply to everyone else.
Women’s health and advocacy organizations help show the Obama administration that support for the birth control benefit far outweighs opposition to it.
Some religiously-affiliated institutions characterize themselves as “secular” when recruiting or seeking public funding but “church-controlled” when demanding exemptions from the law, such as the birth control benefit. Potential employees, students, and patients—as well as taxpayers generally—deserve to know who they are dealing with.
And loathe as I am to admit it, all the studies in the world demonstrating that emergency contraception works not by preventing implantation but by preventing ovulation and therefore fertilization might not hold sway in court.
A federal court blocked the Obama administration’s birth control benefit from applying to a for-profit company, further blurring the lines between the secular and religious when it comes to constitutional rights.
A group of 11 Republicans, led by Orrin Hatch, has filed an amicus brief in support of Hobby Lobby’s ongoing effort to wiggle its way out of complying with the provision in the ACA’s birth control provision.
Eighteen for-profit companies have filed lawsuits to overturn the birth control benefit in the Affordable Care Act, which requires that all insurance policies cover birth control without a co-pay as part of preventive care. These companies argue that including insurance coverage for birth control “violates their religious freedom.” Here’s a brief introduction to those companies and their cases.
A round-up of reproductive justice news.
It is now clear that no “compromise” short of freeing all health plans from any regulation whatsoever having to do with contraception will placate fundamentalist Catholic groups. But with the Notre Dame appeal also comes evidence that the costs of these suits to Catholic universities is rising.
