Phyllo: and you still don’t get it?
that is what is wrong with the world because they can just as easily refuse to pay and I
have no recourse but to starve. humans beings have basic rights and those rights include
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (sound familiar) What we are talking about includes
the fundamental rights every human has, the right to life, housing, education, freedom and love (
the above list is by no means includes the basics)
Kropotkin
When did a corporation gain the “right” to be a religious entity??? 
A religious entity, such as a church, can incorporate and thus be a corporation, but a corporation is an economic entity, not a belief system. By equivocating the two, money becomes the religion.
James S Saint: When did a corporation gain the “right” to be a religious entity???
A religious entity, such as a church, can incorporate and thus be a corporation, but a corporation is an economic entity, not a belief system. By equivocating the two, money becomes the religion.
K: this must be a truly bad decision when James and I agree, for different reasons, but nevertheless
I believe Hell just froze over.
Kropotkin
When did it not have the right?
But the people who run it can have belief systems and can run their corporation based on that belief system.
No.
K: : I see quality of life as about constant pain. If you are in diminished capacity for a long period
of time due to medical issues such as menstrual pain and the like, then yes, they need REAL MEDICAL ATTENTION.
Phyllo: Therefore, everyone needs free contraceptives and not just the ones who demonstrate medical need.
K: I have always felt everyone should have free contraceptives. It does so many great things that this is
a fantastic idea.
PH: Why not meds for those who do not need meds?
K: I can justify free contraceptives on several levels, but meds for those who don’t need meds gets trickier.
As it stands today, I have a spinal issue from prior surgery, that is ongoing and quite painful and will exist
for the rest of my life. I can’t get a doctor to help me with getting vicodin because of news strict laws
regarding vicodin. I could go the medical marijuana route but rather not. I have relentless and ongoing pain
every day with no recourse. It is affecting my quality of life. Now for those who want vicodin for fun,
I can’t really justify it in regards to anything other then fun or addiction, not medical like contraceptives.
Kropotkin
But not as a church with the rights of a religion. Religious beliefs are not a part of the laws governing corporations. Governments control corporations. Religions control beliefs. They are separate (supposedly).
If religion controls the corporations, then government controls the religion.
Yes.
James S Saint: When did a corporation gain the “right” to be a religious entity???
E: When did it not have the right?
K: the key is really, can corporations force its employees to follow the corporation/owners religious beliefs?
and this ruling says its employees are force to act in accordance or gets benefits in accordance to the corporation/
owners religious beliefs.
James S Saint: A religious entity, such as a church, can incorporate and thus be a corporation, but a corporation is an economic entity, not a belief system.
E: But the people who run it can have belief systems and can run their corporation based on that belief system.
K: forcing its employees to behave in a manner that is against their belief system but be forced
to obey the corporation/owners religious belief system. That is the problem.
James S Saint: By equivocating the two, money becomes the religion.
E: No.
K: yes.
Kropotkin
Also if the corporation has the right to be a religious entity, it has no tax liability.
And if religious belief is the dictating factor over law, then a religious belief that dictates that women be subservient to men, allows for the corporation to dictate that female employs bow in submissive servitude.
Sounds like fun, but… emm…
The real kicker is this ruling opens the door for open religious warfare AND
the right of Christians to suffer whatever form of beliefs their owners have thus
hindu’s can force their employees to the hindu religion and muslims to their religion and
buddhist to their religion and take away all forms of religion if the owners are atheist so
no need to get Christmas off or easter off because they are religious holidays, and the owners/
corporation is atheist so, no religious holidays off. The mind boggles at the myriad ways this
can go sideways and very, very fast. Beware Christians, you are not the only religion on the block,
you just think you are the only religion on the block.
Kropotkin
Christians are well aware of the dominate Human Secular religion running the nation (into the sewage pipe).
Its a wise and healthy block, and lays the foundations for future when participation in ethics is compulsory for the individual, group, and government in regards to
Euemptosia, the ‘the proness to disease’ we all have.
The Euemptosia of each individual is ultimately unique, and ideally we expect medical science to be able to custom design medicines and therapies exactly, in direct relation to the details of our symptoms. We would also like a scale of prescribed varieties that fit our personal choice in health if we individually dislike the solution due to excessive costs, moral or personal distaste in the method, or it just doesnt fit our life needs.
This is the obvious, perfered… dreamed to be perfected desire we would have of medicine, right… infinite, competent choice on a sliding scale.
The supreme court looked at how we are going to compulsively require entities who really shouldnt have ANYTHING to do with your health, required via liturgy (social contract obligations of one sector of society to provide to the rest, be it religious or purely secular, like in ancient Greece… a topic Aristotle was fond of discussing) to be part and parcel.
The Supreme Court recognized the obvious… the way we structured the law produces obvious moral implications which ultimately are unavoidable… the corporate system we used evolved in Feudal times… by mandating employers provide insurance didnt take them out of the loop morally, it FORCED them in if anything. They have become, much against their will, however irrationally… part of the medical decision making process. They are entities with a character, who can sue individuals for damages, and vice versa. They are by law able to form and dissolve contracts, and hold ideas, pursue and reject values, influence society, etc.
The idea of forcing them via compulsion, without choice, into their employees medical care via state enforced FEUDALISM therefor has obvious negative sticking points to a society that perceives itself post feudal, as individuals who are equal right citizens and, and not a hierarchy of specific, varying rights and responsibilities. The Supreme Court realizes its a Hybrid System… and it has precedents for both systems… common law stretches back to the 9th century after all, and some states, like South Africa, adopted a more Federal approach to it, where medical access to treatment was a constitutional right guaranteed by the federal government. That system produces advantages over ours, and obvious evils as well.
The good news is, though employers can op out… which is very sane, reasonable and good ultimately… it lays the foundation of compulsion in our society as ultimately restrained by morality, and not its Nazis opposite, the individual denied can shift the Onus to the courts to sue the insurance carriers in specific cases where their medical condition has no relation specifically to the face value objection of what that medicine otherwise can ethically due.
Our court system really doesnt have a series of precedents on the local and state level for this, but legislatively, some states have begun this, such as glacoma and medical marijuana… which was banned on a federal level.
What we are essentially seeing is a birth of what will someday become a new dedicated system of court law, similar to family courts and traffic courts, whos precedents start off in the era of state rights struggles, and a very weird and by all accounts backwards quasi-corporate, mandated medical insurance system from the federal level that has to balance out the science and logic underlining prescriptive science, liability, and the nature of individual morality and awkward group ethos.
Obamacare is insane and irrational AS IT IS, it trips up and smacks alot of civil and moral rights, is financially absurd, and unlikely to function long term as it is. This decision is the first of many, obvious necessary decisions that will in times come to weigh in on how our medical system should ethically function, the relation every member and group in society is obliged, and how medicine will need to evolve to better itself to meet our the challenge.
You will likely find popping up very quickly a niche market of entrepreneurs who will study this case, and customize kosher, halah, Christian, Hindu, etc prescriptive variants that get around thus issue. Say you need embryonic skin cells, but being a Christian, be as a employer or patient, are squeamish about executing a fellow american via a abortion, cannibalizing their flesh… you can look up an specific ethical alternative, that perhaps costs more, such as Matristem, which uses pigcells to regenerate flesh… ir if its Kosher or Halah issues, a further varient.
Our prescriptive medical system adjusts to a moral spectrum, where all levels of society that is compelled to comply… you the individual, doctors, your employer, local government, state, and federal balance our their issues together.
Its already nearly that complicated as it us, thus just streamlines that necessity, and gives a across the board initial impulse to get the judicial apparatus running.
If you dislike the idea of your employer having a say in your health, obvious thing to do is leave the employer, or if you cant for whatever reason, help appeal Obamacare with regard to employer mandates, and adopt a system, if your still otherwise for Obamacare, that doesnt irrationally drag your employer of all people into paying, and thereful having a default ethical and moral say, in your personal health care. The way our patient rights of privacy are set up, your employer cant know the specifics… if you want a procedure that is sickening and repulsive to them, something strongly linked to say… Organ Smuggling from duped Haitians tricked into selling a lung or kidney, then they have every reason to be opposed to products linked superficially to the trade. If I worked for you, and I said my doctor prescribed me Soylent Green, you obviously have every right to get pissed off and outraged if your the one paying for it, knowing what the main ingredient is. Much less of course if not required to pay for it… but even then, ethical questions arise. Hence why our laws are finally being linked up medically together, and the inevitable beginnings of a new medical court system, and a new medical entrepreneurial approach.
The trick is to think rationally, use your words and intellect, and not threaten civil war and physical harm to anyone who opposes your knee jerk, poorly thought out reactions. Obamacare is a very irrational, poorly thought out Frankenstein… and its essential characteristic is melding Federal and Feudal features together. Our courts synthesize and balance precedents, precedents stretching back over a thousand years, and expects broad uniformity in the mechanucs of the law, receptivity to the creation of new laws to be worked into and rebalance said system, and checks and balances outside of the court system to balance the system out. By bringing in non governmental parties, such as the medieval third estate, or under Obamacare Employers, into the workings of a government, you inevitably have to acknowledge they exist, that they have a moral and ethical framework to how they approach things, that if they are put into awkward or debilitating situations it has repercussions for they whole system, etc. Our employers are therefor part of our system of checks and balances, just as the media, corporate watchdogs, philosophers, lobbyists, professors, lawyers, etc have each taken stands and gained some accepted right and legal protection over time. Its inevitable in a participatory democracy with an independent legal system. It prefers deep thinking and philosophy over dick headed violent revolution to solve issues.
So think, dont threaten. And if you threaten, expect repercussions from those better positioned to hand out violence who are threatened by your threats.
Secular religion is an oxymoron.
OHHHH, you mean the legal filing of a religion. Something I’ve never really held to strongly with myself…
And if Corporations control government, then the circle is complete!!!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zLx_JtcQVI[/youtube]
Never!
What the hell? There's medical uses for hot water, ginger ale, tweezers, and steak. "I can repurpose it to serve a medical function" does not make something medicine that needs to be covered by health insurance. All you're doing is proving conservatives right when they say health care reform is a liberal power grab because they can define absolutely anything as being related to the public health.
Anybody with even a minor attempt at objectivity should see that not all 'medicine' is created equally. Even if you want to call contraceptives 'medical treatment' and not have people roll their eyes at you, it's not medical treatment in the same way chemo or a kidney transplant is, and it's pretty clear that to the extent that contraceptives are 'medicine' they aren't important enough 'medicine' to trump people's religious freedoms.
But of course, we're talking about progressives here- they want to reason like a child: If I can come up with a convoluted argument that contraceptives are 'medicine', then I can remind people that medicine is a life-or-death service that is more important than the 1st Amendment. Not a lick of common sense or reason, just a word game to screw your agenda on past the people. Once in a while it doesn't work- time to cry about it I guess.
If said person is working a full time job good enough to be providing health insurance, then said person can afford birth control pills- they run about 20 - 50 dollars a month. Companies not having to cover them is not equivalent to women not being able to have them. IF you need birth control pills to live (scratch that, to not have your quality of life hindered), AND you happen to work for one of the handful of companies that are actually affected by the SCOTUS ruling and choose not to provide those pills, then just go by some birth control pills! This tiny inconvenience in a fringe situation is not worth ignoring the constitution.
May women speak in this thread?
First, let me say I don’t like the idea of abortion, if it’s used as birth control. But I believe there are times in women’s lives when abortion can be justified.
That said, from what I’ve read, the Hobby Lobby decision concerned abortifacients and whether or not a family-owned and controlled business should be mandated to pay for those drugs, if the business owner is religiously anti-abortion. There is a great deal of difference between an abortifacient and a contraceptive. (ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margin … at-it-isnt) *NCR, by the way, is the National Catholic Report. There are three abortifacients currently on the market: RU-486, Ella, and IUDs. (The IUD isn’t a drug; it’s a device.)
There is no oral contraceptive offered over the counter in the US. (contraception.about.com/b/2009/0 … ounter.htm), except for the Plan B, ‘morning after’ pill.
I still think the SCOTUS decision wasn’t a ‘good’ one for a number of reasons. I believe it’s open to misinterpretation which will go on until someone challenges the ruling and I believe it will be very difficult to enforce should it be made into a law. How is religious belief measured?
My other objections are feeling responses, only.
Liz 
I think it's weird that you're talking about this decision being 'enforced' should it be 'made into law' when it's an [i]exception to the law[/i]. What's unenforceable is Obama's attempt to force every business in the country to pay for their employee's abortion pills. Why is it unenforceable? Because this country respects religious objections to federal mandates. Sure, now it's going to be a giant clusterfuck to try and figure out who has a legitimate religious objection and who doesn't, I agree with you there... but the moral of that story is "You probably shouldn't have tried to force businesses to pay for morally controversial products."
Any lawmaker with sense should have seen this coming and not tried to push it through- it should have never gotten to the Supreme Court in the first place. The very idea that forcing Catholics to buy abortion pills for their employees is something Obama was willing to push to the Supreme Court is odious.
Also, PK equating “A business cannot be legally forced to pay for your abortion pills” with “Now a business can deny you medical treatment” is just…it’s sad is what it is. It sucks to even be in a position to have to explain that not buying something for somebody isn’t the same thing as denying it to them. It sucks to have to point out that companies continuing to not provide something that they’ve never been required to provide in the first place isn’t suddenly a medical crisis just because Obama briefly tried to force them to and was shot down. Women are in the exact same place now as they were a few years ago before Obama tried to get his unconstitutional reforms through in the first place- was it really so dreadful that we need to be wringing our hands and gnashing our teeth?
Really? American democracy fucking died this day because a provision in a bill that the people didn’t vote on in the first place was shot down by the Supreme Court? Corporations didn’t have to buy abortion pills for their employees and they still don’t…things staying the same as they always were is the end of the country as we know it? I see. Not letting unions sign up workers against their will and charge them dues is undemocratic? Progressive logic I guess!
Just a couple of quick questions–Well–maybe more than just a few, and maybe they won’t be quick enough for you–But–
Is the decision an ‘exception to the law’?–you’re not clear with your antecedent, here. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the law, whether or not you agree with how it came about. I’ve read the Act, but it was some time ago. I’ll have to read it again; but, if I can recall correctly, the portion of the law to which you are referring says nothing other than women’s health care. There’s nothing about abortion pills or contraceptive meds. I’ll try to wade through the over 700 pgs., because I may be mistaken, to find and reference what it does say about women’s health care, if you don’t mind waiting a day or two.
Also, the President had nothing to do with taking the case to the SCOTUS. The case was brought by David Green and his family (or representatives), who own Hobby Lobby and a religious education and supply chain. The Green family is Evangelical Christian, and not Catholic. Did you even bother to read my source? It doesn’t sound as if you did. But, you’re correct in saying it should never have gone to the SCOTUS in the first place. That it did is an indication, to me, that the case failed in lower courts and was continually appealed–or that the lower courts appealed to the SCOTUS for advice on how to handle it. (see Wikipedia, “Procedures of the Supreme Court”)
It’s factual that the balance of the hormones, estrogen and progesterone, in contraceptive medications are also used for patients who suffer from an imbalance of the two. This can be detrimental to any woman’s overall health. With a female, even a small hormonal imbalance can affect more than just the reproductive system. For many women, it goes way beyond “quality of life.” If you don’t believe me, talk to a good gynecologist.
I feel the timing of the decision was deliberate. The SCOTUS won’t meet again until this coming October. Any good conservative should have known that this decision would cause a widening of the already large schism between conservatives, moderates, and liberals among the constituency.
I also feel that it’s a giant step backwards for women in the US. Why should men decide what’s ‘best’ for women? Why can’t women be on top once in a while?
Enjoy,
Liz
Did the good liberals not realize that Obamacare “would cause a widening of the already large schism between conservatives, moderates, and liberals among the constituency?” It was a bill passed with a Majority Democrat, and a Democrat president, in which not a single Republican voted for… Did they care then? Why should we care now that we are fighting against the bad law?
Men are not the only ones involved with the decision. And again, the problem with giving away the ability to decide how healthcare should be handled, by individuals, results in people far away deciding for you. Don’t want a man to decide, stop giving your rights to other people.
Clearly because they don’t want to, based on their actions…