Hobby Lobby Lawsuit: Since When Does Your Boss Have a Right to Dictate Your Health Choices?

Does your for-profit business pay taxes? If so, then no matter how religious you are, you are not a church. This particular fact seems to have been missed by the owners of Hobby Lobby, one of the largest craft store chains in the country.

Currently, they are arguing that as a religious organization, they should not have to carry insurance for their employees that covers birth control or Plan B emergency contraception under the new Obamacare contraception mandate. Hobby Lobby and their lawyers intend to take this argument to federal court.

The main objection Hobby Lobby has is that contraception allegedly goes against God's plan by preventing implantation of fertilized eggs, even though this has been disproven. They consider this to be equivalent to abortion, which shows the amount of poor logic involved in this particular objection, and demonstrates admirably that corporations should not be making medical decisions for their employees — decisions these employees are most likely to be discussing with their doctors, not their bosses.

Firstly, an abortion is the removal of an already implanted zygote. Plan B does not do this.  To be effective, it needs to be taken within 72 hours of the unprotected sex or birth control failure.  It works in one of three ways: 1) it prevents ovulation, 2) it prevents the sperm from joining the egg in conception, or 3) scientists used to speculate that it prevented implantation, making it impossible for the fertilized egg to attach to the lining of the uterus. (This has been disproven.) None of those three are abortions.

Secondly, let's take on the argument from the side of religion. God's will? Shouldn't God's will be more powerful than any contraception? If the great mythical father figure in the sky wants more babies, then no puny piece of copper in the womb of the docile, will-less breeding machine (pardon me, I mean woman) should be able to thwart that, right? So why not give women access to birth control? If God wants them to have a baby anyway, a stork will bring one, won't it?

This all comes down to a question of rights. Does the for-profit, tax-paying, non-sanctified, state-sided corporation have the right to deny women access to birth control?  Or do women have the right to make this decision regarding control of their bodies in consultation with their doctors and no one else? The Affordable Health Care Act says no to the first question and yes to the second, and soon the 10th circuit court in Colorado will make a decision in regards to Hobby Lobby's suit. Here's hoping they won't decide to set law and medicine backwards by 50 years.