#dnaEdit: A regressive ruling

The religious right in the United States has reason to smile. At least, for the time being. In a controversial decision, the Supreme Court has now excluded contraceptives for women under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage. Its well known that since its inception, the ACA, was bitterly fought and resisted by the conservatives. Though the Obama administration did finally win that hard fought battle, strenuous attempts are clearly still underway to undermine the Act.

Besides revealing how powerful the anti ACA lobby still remains, the recent  Court decision once again underlines the stark reality of US’s deeply regressive and sexist culture. According to the ruling, a closely-held company can be exempt from contraceptive coverage under the ACA. Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma-based craft store chain and Conestoga Wood Specialities, a small Mennonite-owned cabinet maker in Pennsylvania, had challenged the ACA’s contraceptive mandate, requiring insurance policies to cover birth control without a copay. Alarmingly, 71 other for-profit companies have also decided to take the Hobby Lobby route.

In their petition urging the Court to reject Hobby Lobby’s plea, 44 Law professors have argued that permitting corporations to assert and impose the religious beliefs of their shareholders in order to dodge compliance  with a generally-applicable law is fundamentally at odds with the entire concept of incorporation. 

Hogging media headlines, the case pitted the US administration, women’s health advocates and the religious right, against each other. At the heart of the debate sparked by the Hobby Lobby case is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which has never been applied to for-profit entities. The apex court had to decide whether or not corporations have the right to make the beliefs of the employer synonymous with that of employees.

The arguments levelled by Hobby Lobby also target women’s right to abortion, a critical issue yet to be resolved in America. The company has objected to a handful of contraceptives that they speculate can block a fertilized egg. Such an assumption however is neither documented in the science nor the medical definition of abortion. Other for-profit companies have objected to any birth control coverage at all.

Given that 90 per cent of America’s businesses, including Koch Industries and Bechtel, are ‘closely held’ companies, the Court ruling will affect the lives of millions of women across the US. The right to contraception is a fundamental right of women. By denying access to these crucial services, the Court has merely strengthened the religious conservative, anti-women lobby. 

A couple of months ago, Republican State Senator Fred Dyson, in an outrageous comment, said that since sex without the aim of pregnancy is a “recreational activity”, any state sponsorship of birth control is tantamount to paying people to go and watch films. Here is a clear case of stigmatisation of sexually active women outside the ambit of the socially accepted institution of marriage. Time and again, the Republicans have claimed that birth control promotes promiscuity. An assumption that has been proven to be based on nothing but deeply entrenched conservative values. On the contrary, a study by researchers of the Washington University School of Medicine, found that the participants’ incidence of “high risk sexual behavior” such as “having multiple partners” did not increase when they were given birth control at no cost.

It is unfair that the company managements have leveraged their moral and religious objections to block access to basic health services of their women employees. It’s good that the Obama administration has announced its resolve to work around the Hobby Lobby verdict.