Somewhere behind the media spin, the politicians’ posturing, and abortion supporters’ outrage is the truth about the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court ruling. So Human Coalition wants to help you separate fact from fiction on this important case.
If you were to read the mainstream media’s coverage about Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, you might conclude that the essence of the dispute was about women’s reproductive rights and birth control.
Soraya Chemaly, writing for Time Magazine, started her summary of the Supreme Court decisions by claiming, “The Supreme Court delivered a severe blow to women in the United States when it ruled that ‘closely-held’ corporations, such as Hobby Lobby, can refuse to provide insurance coverage for birth control based on owners’ religious beliefs.” Included in her article is a picture of a woman holding a sign that reads Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!
This particular article doesn’t even include the word abortion, which is what the case was really about. Hobby Lobby only objected to providing health insurance coverage for four abortifacient forms of birth control, while they were amendable to providing coverage for 16 other types that don’t cause abortions.
Chemaly’s article is typical of many pro-abortion advocates. They continually draw attention away from the reality of abortion (the unjust killing of an unborn human being) to other issues, such as women’s rights or reproductive freedom. And while genuine gender equality and our Constitutional rights are extremely important, it is ironic that many feminists argue aggressively for the right to abort. Abortion is a tool used by men to exploit and demean women, and it causes the gender gap to widen, not decrease. I covered this topic in great detail in my book Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women.
The Hobby Lobby case was not about birth control or reproductive freedom. It was about forcing a company to cover the cost of killing unborn human beings.
An article posted on CNN.com, entitled “Supreme Court Rules against Obama in Contraception Case,” includes a curious comment about Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties’ legal assertion: “They argued the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, violates the First Amendment and other federal laws protecting religious freedom because it requires them to provide coverage for contraceptives like the ‘morning-after pill,’ which the companies consider tantamount to abortion.”
Notice the subtle equivocation: “the companies consider tantamount to abortion.”
The use of that phrase makes it sound like it is the opinion of Hobby Lobby that the four contraceptives in question can cause abortion. It is not Hobby Lobby’s opinion — it is scientific fact.
Take Plan B, for example. In an article I wrote last year, I showed that Plan B, according to its own literature, may inhibit implantation of the zygote/embryo in the wall of the uterus. Interfering with implantation (thus causing the death of the embryo) is, by definition, abortion. This is not an opinion; it is medical fact.
Abortion advocates and proponents of abortifacients such as Plan B will often claim that interfering with implantation does not meet the definition of abortion because pregnancy doesn’t start until implantation. Scientifically speaking, life begins at conception, not implantation. Don’t be fooled by these types of semantic gymnastics.
Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood argued persuasively that they should not be forced to pay for drugs that can cause abortion. The Supreme Court agreed, though by the slimmest of margins. Let’s be vigilant in talking about this important case in its proper context and in protecting the unborn from being killed in what is supposed to be the safest place on the planet — the womb.