'Little Sisters of the Poor' jubilant after an earlier anti-birth control SC ruling. Following the July 8th ruling they have to be delirious. (Below)
Who would have believed three and a half years ago that a confirmed 'pussy grabber' would be elected president, aided in no small part by religious fanatics and hypocrites? And then - once in dubious power- fight like a rabid rat to take away women's reproductive rights? Well, I did and Janice as well. This slimeball has - along with his foolish religious supporters - sought to not only undermine abortion rights, but to eliminate the contraceptive provisions under the Affordable Care Act.
They reached their full influence in the July 8th Supreme Court ruling (Little Sisters of the Poor vs. Pennsylvania) when any employer (not just religious) who objects to providing contraceptives under the ACA mandate can just blow it off . This followed the pussy grabber's efforts over 2017, 2018 to expand exemptions for any employers with "good faith" objections. Well, Pennsylvania and New Jersey sued calling it an "abuse of discretion". In fact, it was much more: a veritable power play to increase religious hegemony and largely at the expense of poor and minority women.
Recall back in September of 2012 how women's activist Sandra Fluke warned what would befall American women if such reproductive rights were taken away. In a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention, Ms. Fluke warned of a potential authoritarian future:
"Warnings of that future are not distractions. They’re not imagined. That future could be real. In that America, your new president could be a man who stands by when a public figure tries to silence a private citizen with hateful slurs. Who won’t stand up to the slurs, or to any of the extreme, bigoted voices in his own party."
Remember this was in Sept. 2012 or four years before Trump the demagogue was shoe horned into power with the help of the Russkies.
As Sandra went on:
"It would be an America in which you have a bill that would allow pregnant women to die preventable deaths in our emergency rooms. An America in which states humiliate women by forcing us to endure invasive ultrasounds we don’t want and our doctors say we don’t need. An America in which access to birth control is controlled by people who will never use it; in which politicians redefine rape so survivors are victimized all over again; in which someone decides which domestic violence victims deserve help, and which don’t. We know what this America would look like. In a few short months, it’s the America we could be. But it’s not the America we should be. It’s not who we are."
Thanks to Trump and his enablers, and now the Supremes, this is where we are heading. Of course, the primary reactionary organ of capitalist finance (The Wall Street Journal) was elated with the ruling - fairly drooling in an op -ed ('Religious Liberty Lives At The High Court', July 9, p. A14) - that it was a "victory, though a narrow one" for religious liberty. No, it was a narrow victory for religious hegemony and don't buy for a second the WSJ's nabobs are the least interested in religious liberty. No, it's all about the unfettered reproduction of more consumers to spend, spend, spend and prop up stocks and future bull markets.
What we do know is that if this religious hegemony is allowed to expand (say after a Trump re-election) - it would see all American women in the same sad, servile position as the women in 'The Handmaid's Tale'. This is why all affected women - especially of child bearing age- need to vote for Biden in November, even if they must crawl over broken glass to do so. That's how serious this is.
Meanwhile, in the dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader -Ginsburg wrote that the majority was now forcing women to pay the cost of their employers' religious beliefs, adding (WSJ, July 9, p.A1):
"For the first time the Court casts totally aside countervailing rights and interests in its zeal to secure religious rights to the nth degree.'"
Noting that Congress had already (by passage of the ACA) set the stage for women to have ready access to contraceptives and other preventative measures that "safeguard their health and allow them to chart their own life's course."
But Trump the traitor and pussy grabber wants none of that. As the male chauvinist authoritarian psycho he is, he wants American women to remain barefoot and pregnant and with only his authoritarian stooges (like his personal AG, William Barr) charting their life's courses.
As for the Little Sisters, I already - in previous posts - had tried to educate them on why their case was wrong, and that they should not be trying to prevent contraceptive services (via Obamacare) especially for their secular employees. As I noted in my November 17, 2015 post:
"the only thing being “taken away” here is the Church employer’s ability to take away secular employees’ rights to the same standard of health care as all other secular employees’ in the public or private sphere. The Church, meanwhile, is quite free to morally legislate its own members’ do’s and don’ts to its heart’s content. NO one is taking away that right.
If the Church sees fit to deny its own members’ as employees access to birth control or the morning after pill, or abortion, then fine. It is well within its purview. But it can’t extrapolate that to secular employees and retain tax-free status as a peculiarly religious institution."
The tax-free aspect is critical here and a huge reason why the nuns (and their case collaborators, supporters) are wrong. In effect, if they accept tax support from the (secular) state, they cannot then go around and deny health care benefits - in this case for contraception - for secular employees. As a point of reference, in 2019 29 percent of all U.S. giving ($128.17 billion) went to religious institutions - and all those dollars were tax deductible - resulting in billions of dollars of lost federal and state tax revenue.
More to the point, unlike nearly all other nonprofits, religious nonprofits are not required to file annual tax returns, i.e. revealing how the donations were spent. Maybe they were partly spent on producing pamphlets to attack the ACA and its birth control mandate. Or maybe the money went into a secret slush fund to pay the Little Sisters' lawyers. Who knows? The point is there is no tax filing accountability. All of us rationalist or atheist U.S. taxpayers could be subsidizing publication of religious bunkum on "natural law" for all we know.
Here's another kicker: In most cases religious institutions are exempt from paying property taxes, depriving local governments of badly needed income to provide essential services like public education, law enforcement, and fire protection. (As reported in the Denver Post (July 12), "studies estimate American churches own up to $800 billion in untaxed property".)
A sweet deal if you can get it! No wonder the Little Sisters will be smiling with beatific visages in the wake of the Supreme Court's latest misfire. Sadly, those smiles will be lost on the poor, the Latina and African-American women, who lack the resources to prevent further babies they cannot afford.
See Also:
Excerpt:
Birth control is critical and a time sensitive medication that treats serious conditions and allows people to plan their futures and decide if and when to be a parent.
This ruling and resulting loss of access to contraception will not hit everyone in the same way. It is inextricably linked to economic stability and advancement, and it is one of society’s most potent tools in the fight to advance race and gender equity.
Restrictions like this target Black and Latinx people who are more likely to have low incomes and for whom basic health care has always remained out of reach because of historic and continued underinvestment in access to affordable health care. This decision will only make life harder for the very people who are keeping our economy afloat during this pandemic and fighting in the streets for the right to control their bodies and their lives.
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