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" Your right to access contraception took a hit today in the Supreme Court decision Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. According to the Supreme Court, many companies can refuse to provide insurance plans that cover forms of birth control the employer finds religiously objectionable. In other words, your boss&amp;#039;s religious beliefs might dictate what kind of contraception your insurance covers.  At issue in Hobby Lobby was a section of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which requires that for-profit companies with more than 50 employees provide &amp;quot;a group health plan or group health insurance coverage&amp;quot; which includes &amp;quot;minimum essential coverage.&amp;quot; Preventative care and screening is part of that essential coverage, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) consulted with the Institute of Medicine to determine what insurance plans should have to cover. Among other suggestions, the Institute of Medicine recommended that insurance cover contraception \u2014 some of the most common prescription medications, and something overwhelming majorities of women will use at some point in their lives. Contraception is also a big money-saver, since unintended pregnancy is quite costly. Because some religious groups oppose particular forms of contraception, the Obama administration brokered a thoughtful deal: Religious institutions don&amp;#039;t have to cover contraception at all; religiously affiliated companies, such as eldercare centers owned by the Catholic Church but serving and employing a variety of people, don&amp;#039;t have to cover contraception directly but rather contract out with a third party to provide birth control for employees; and for-profit companies with more than 50 employees have to offer insurance that covers birth control. If they don&amp;#039;t, they pay a fine.  Enter Hobby Lobby, a for-profit chain of craft stores owned by a Christian family who say they run the company according to Christian values. While their actual commitment to those values is questionable, there&amp;#039;s little dispute that the company CEO, David Green, believes certain forms of contraception \u2014 specifically, IUDs and the &amp;quot;morning-after&amp;quot; pills Ella and Plan B \u2014 interfere with fertilized eggs. That&amp;#039;s not actually what scientists and medical experts think, but never mind; it&amp;#039;s Green&amp;#039;s sincerely held religious belief, and religious beliefs don&amp;#039;t need to be factually accurate. Hobby Lobby sued over the law, saying it infringed on their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law passed in the mid-1990s that says the government may not &amp;quot;substantially burden&amp;quot; a person&amp;#039;s religious exercise even with a generally applicable law, unless the government shows that the burden furthers a compelling government interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest. According to the Hobby Lobby, the company itself has religious beliefs in line with its owners, and the law requiring it to cover contraception or pay a fine was a substantial burden. Another company, Conestoga Wood, made a similar claim.  A majority of the Supreme Court agreed with them. According to the court, the contraception mandate violates the sincerely held beliefs of those companies, and the government failed to show that it did so in the least restrictive way possible. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito made a few suggestions for how the government could make sure women have access to contraception without violating employers&amp;#039; religious beliefs \u2014 primarily, having the government pay for it. &amp;quot;Today the court issued a decision cloaked in religious liberty,&amp;quot; said Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the ACLU. &amp;quot;For the first time, the highest court in the country said that certain for-profit businesses can use their religious belief to deny their employees a benefit they were guaranteed by law.&amp;quot; Protecting religious freedom is crucial, but so is maintaining a pluralistic society in which one person&amp;#039;s religious views do not result in discrimination against many others. The court has long struggled to strike a balance between the rights of individuals to practice their religion and the rights of individuals to not be forced into adhering to religious strictures in which they do not believe. The Hobby Lobby decision only applies to closely held companies with more than 50 employees, so larger public companies are not able to make the claim that the contraception mandate violates their religious beliefs, but closely held corporations employ more than half of all American workers. That doesn&amp;#039;t mean those companies will suddenly refuse to cover birth control \u2014 birth control is, after all, both extremely common and fiscally responsible, and many will continue to offer it \u2014 but regardless of how many companies actually claim a religious exemption, the court still took a radical step in favor of allowing an individual&amp;#039;s religious beliefs to bulldoze over others. But most galling about the Hobby Lobby decision is the fact that the court separates contraception out from other medications and forms of health care that some religious groups find objectionable. Many supporters of the ACA&amp;#039;s contraception mandate point out that if you let an employer&amp;#039;s religious beliefs dictate healthcare options for employees, that opens up a Pandora&amp;#039;s box of potential religious objections. If your boss is a Jehovah&amp;#039;s Witness, can he pull coverage of blood transfusions from employee health plans? If your boss is religiously opposed to vaccines, can she refuse to offer insurance that covers them? Alito responds to that argument by saying that this decision only applies to the contraception mandate and &amp;quot;should not be understood to hold that all insurance-covered mandates, e.g. for vaccinations or blood transfusions, must necessarily fall if they conflict with an employer&amp;#039;s religious beliefs.&amp;quot;  In other words, it&amp;#039;s OK to use your religious beliefs to bar women from getting common, often necessary care in the form of contraception. But blocking blood transfusions or vaccines may go too far.  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg&amp;#039;s dissent cuts to the heart of that hypocrisy and illustrates that this is fundamentally about hostility toward gender equality and women&amp;#039;s rights dressed up in the garb of religious freedom. She calls the majority decision &amp;quot;startling&amp;quot; in its breadth, since &amp;quot;the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.&amp;quot;  While this decision opens up an enormous number of potential claims for religious exemptions from generally applicable laws, it&amp;#039;s no coincidence that contraception was at the forefront of this case. As the Supreme Court held in Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Ginsburg quoted in her Hobby Lobby dissent, &amp;quot;The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.&amp;quot; Without access to contraception, there is no way for women to be equal players in society. And indeed, the social revolutions that are still moving us toward gender equality were immediately precipitated by the invention of the birth control pill. Accessible and affordable contraception brings with it a bevy of benefits, not least among them healthier children, women who live longer, and more robust economies.  But in the U.S., contraception is increasingly politically controversial, despite large majorities of Americans supporting its use. &amp;quot;For women, birth control isn&amp;#039;t controversial,&amp;quot; Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, said. &amp;quot;The only controversy is that we&amp;#039;re still fighting to have this basic health care covered by insurance.&amp;quot;  In recent years, conservative politicians have defunded Planned Parenthood, one of the nation&amp;#039;s largest providers of contraception, and launched a series of attacks on birth control access. The Hobby Lobby decision is one more step in a disturbing cultural shift to imbue birth control with shame, claim birth control causes abortions, and treat it as somehow different than every other medication on the market. Underlying that shift isn&amp;#039;t a sincere belief that birth control is murder. It&amp;#039;s a discomfort with the changing gender roles and greater gender equality that birth control brings along with it.  &amp;quot;What we&amp;#039;re seeing is a full-court press from the other side to marginalize and separate out women&amp;#039;s health care,&amp;quot; Ilyse Hogue, President of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s medically inaccurate, it creates conditions where women are second-class citizens, and it continues to stigmatize women who are just trying to live our lives making our own personal decisions that are best for us and our families.&amp;quot;  Now it&amp;#039;s up to Congress and the Obama administration to come up with a fix that will still allow women to access contraception without violating the religious beliefs of companies. That won&amp;#039;t be an easy task, and women&amp;#039;s organization leaders say an accommodation cannot fall on the backs of women who simply want the basic health care they pay for under their company insurance plans. &amp;quot;It is completely inappropriate and unacceptable for women to be expected to look to some special out-of-the-usual way of accommodating what is at core a basic health care need,&amp;quot; Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women&amp;#039;s Law Center, said. &amp;quot;Opponents of contraception will do everything that they can do throw sand in the gears of any kind of accommodation system, and we know as a matter of practical reality that we will have to fight.&amp;quot;  RELATED: Supreme Court Ruling Raises Questions About How to Protect Abortion Clinic Patients Why the Hobby Lobby Case Before the Supreme Court Matters So Much for Women Follow Jill on Twitter. Photo Credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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