The Washington Post took Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to task for the bizarre verbal temper tantrums they’ve been throwing over the Hobby Lobby decision.
The article pointed out that many of the claims both of these very powerful national leaders have been making about the decision are factually inaccurate. Even though the article focuses on politicians who act on the national stage, they could also include a number of their colleagues in the media in this same accusation. The truth has been largely left out of the media discussion of the Hobby Lobby decision.
It’s a great article, and I hope you follow the link and read it in its entirety.
Meanwhile, here are a few excerpts from The Washington Post:
… Nothing in the ruling allows a company to stop a woman from getting or filling a prescription for contraceptives, but that salient fact is often lost.
…“Really, we should be afraid of this court. The five guys who start determining what contraceptions are legal. Let’s not even go there.” — Pelosi This is a very odd statement from the House Democratic leader, given that the majority opinion flatly states that “under our cases, women (and men) have a constitutional right to obtain contraceptives,” citing the 1965 ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut, which under the right to privacy nullified a law prohibiting the use of contraceptives.
… Later, in the same news conference, Pelosi decried that “five men could get down to specifics of whether a woman should use a diaphragm and she should pay for it herself or her boss.” Hobby Lobby involved the owners’ objection to four types of birth control but not diaphragms.
… “The one thing we are going to do during this work period, sooner rather than later, is to ensure that women’s lives are not determined by virtue of five white men. This Hobby Lobby decision is outrageous, and we are going to do something about it.” — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), remarks to reporters, on July 8 The Hobby Lobby decision was written by Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. That’s certainly five men, but Thomas is African American.
… “This is deeply troubling because you have organized religions that oppose health care, period. So if you have an employer who is a member of an organized religion and they decide, you know, I wouldn’t provide health care to my own family because I object religiously, I’m not going to allow any kind of health-care treatment.” — Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), Democratic National Committee chair, appearing on MSNBC, June 30 While there are some religions that object to certain medical procedures, Wasserman Schultz goes to quite an extreme to suggest that employers could block an employee from seeking any kind of health-care treatment. (Again, the issue was who would pay for contraceptives, not whether someone was barred from getting contraceptives.) …
… — Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), interview on MSNBC, June 30 Is Slaughter really saying that the court has taken away an employee’s religious freedom because some contraceptives may not be covered by insurance?
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