Sit back for a moment and think back to the long gone days of 2011. That was the year many of us were either working to ensure Initiative 26 (better known as the personhood amendment) didn't pass, or we were concerned about its passage.
One thing I really remember is when anti-personhood people (like me) said that fetal personhood could and would lead to the banning of certain forms of contraception like IUDs and the morning-after pill commonly known as "Plan B," personhood supporters would say, "no, no we only want to make abortion illegal." In their post-game analysis, they said Mississippi voters would have supported the measure if only they hadn't been lied to and misdirected with the "birth control issue" by outside groups.
Yes, "the birth control issue." Because, remember ladies, none of the people who believe in fetal personhood are trying to take away access to birth control. That is just crazy talk. It's a lie told to defeat personhood.
Fast forward. It's 2014, and Hobby Lobby—along with several other companies like Eden Foods, which packages and sells organic foods—sue so they don't have to participate in the government mandate to cover some, if not all, contraception. This is where I want point out even the Catholic nuns fighting to not cover birth control aren't fighting not to cover vasectomies, which the Catholic church also bans.
Nope, it's all about the lady bits, and it's all about fetal personhood. Why? The foundation of Hobby Lobby's case was that pregnancy happens at the moment of fertilization, not implantation. At the moment the egg is fertilized, it becomes a person, they say.
Of course, that's not how pregnancy works in biology. You can't go to your doctor and say, "Hey, I think one of my eggs is fertilized, and now I'm pregnant." (In fact, if it worked that way, in-vitro fertilization would be so much simpler for people.) Without a belief in fetal personhood, there can be no "deeply held religious belief" that Plan B, Ella, Paraguard IUD and Mirena IUD cause abortions by preventing implantation.
The ruling is based on the premise that companies have the rights of people. Thank you, Citizens United! Who knew that ruling would impact lady bits, right?
Now legally a "person," the company can assert it has religious liberties that must be protected. How convenient that right after Obamacare became law, Hobby Lobby suddenly had a revelation that the Plan B their health-insurance plan provided before Obamacare was now causing abortions.
When the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Hobby Lobby's beliefs trumped scientific fact, that's a problem. It's also troubling when the "eggs are people" standard intersects with a desire to take down any plan by our president. When all of it is justified using corporate personhood and religious freedom, we should all be very alarmed.
Support our reporting -- Follow the MFP.
