Health Care and Contraception: Did the Supreme Court Get It Right?

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  1. Was the Supreme Court right to rule that the Affordable Care Act violated the religio

    • 1024
      No - The ruling allows bosses to impose their religious beliefs on their employees. Besides, the Constitution grants religious freedom to individuals, not corporations.
    • 483
      Yes - The religious beliefs of company owners take precedence over their employees' right to have access to birth control.

140 members have participated

Should religious family-owned companies be required to cover contraceptives under their insurance plans? The high court says no.

I'm curious how you nurses feel about this? Please take a second to vote in our quick poll.

This is a highly political topic, I'd rather not turn this into a hot argumentative subject, so please keep your comments civil :) But please feel free to comment. Thanks

Here is an article on the topic:

Hobby Lobby Ruling Cuts Into Contraceptive Mandate

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In a 5-4 decision Monday, the Supreme Court allowed a key exemption to the health law's contraception coverage requirements when it ruled that closely held for-profit businesses could assert a religious objection to the Obama administration's regulations. What does it mean? Here are some questions and answers about the case.What did the court's ruling do?

The court's majority said that the for-profit companies that filed suit-Hobby Lobby Stores, a nationwide chain of 500 arts and crafts stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a maker of custom cabinets-didn't have to offer female employeesall Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptivesas part of a package of preventive services that must be covered without copays or deductibles under the law. The companies had argued that several types of contraceptivesviolate their owners' religious beliefs. The ruling also covers a Hobby Lobby subsidiary, the Mardel Christian bookstores.

Awesome reply. 'Nuff said.:)

This is why it is particularly irksme when people who claim to be Chritistian do not follow their "Lord's" teachings.

Why the hate for Christians in particular? Why not mention Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists as well? This is how PREJUDICE and bigotry starts folks. Stop justifying your own prejudices and deal with them.

If atheists and agnostics don't follow the Golden Rule, is that irksome for you too?

Specializes in Critical Care.
Your statement is false. Federal taxpayer dollars are used to fund abortion:

Why are abortion businesses accused of greed?

Abortion providers profit financially - and significantly so - from performing abortions. Their business model is purely a financial one. But they never mention financial profit as the basis for their pro-choice platform. Rather, they prefer to mention their concern for 'women’s' rights' instead - a decidedly more noble sentiment.

From 2006 to 2007, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, increased the number of abortions from 264,943 to 289,650. With that increase, total revenue was over 1 BILLION dollars. This included taxpayer dollars in the form of government grants and contracts in excess of $336 million dollars (ref: Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Annual Report 2006).

Planned Parenthood lobbies our politicians at Washington D.C. to remove abortion restrictions in order to assure their future financial success. In 2006, the Planned Parenthood Political Action Committee spent 53.1 million dollars to 'adjust' public policy. (Ref: Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Annual Report, 2006). See Counter the Culture | Feminists for Nonviolent Choices

Federal tax dollars are not used to fund abortion, if there was evidence of that there are numerous anti-abortion groups that would love to see your evidence and take that to court.

The vast majority of the medical and scientific community agrees that a pregnancy is not viable until after implantation, a fertilized is not viable, thus pregnancy does not begin until implantation, although none of that actually had anything to do with the court's decision.

Presumably, this is a corollary to the "no sex outside of marriage/virgins only" meme that underpins so much of the religious-based objection./QUOTE]

Most people I know who don't want to pay for your sex are not affilated with any religion. The fact you single out 'religion' demonstrates your prejudice. Deal with your prejudice and judgmentalism and stop using the "only religious people don't want to pay for our sex" card.

NOBODY wants to pay for your sex whether you are female or MALE.

Federal tax dollars are not used to fund abortion, if there was evidence of that there are numerous anti-abortion groups that would love to see your evidence and take that to court.

Federal tax dollars ARE USED for abortions:

What about other services Planned Parenthood provides besides abortion?

The pie chart used by Planned Parenthood shows that in 2010, Planned Parenthood's prenatal services (services provided to women who chose to keep their baby) was 8.6 percent of all services provided. Adoption referrals accounted for 0.2 percent of all services provided. But if you think those numbers were small, in 2011, those numbers got smaller. In 2011, prenatal services accounted for a measly 0.28 percent of all services provided. Adoption referrals accounted for an even smaller 0.0076 percent of all services rendered. And all this in light of getting almost $500,000,000 dollars (aka half-BILLION dollars) every year from the Federal Government.

As aptly stated by Matthew Clark in his article, 'Media's Abortion Distortion Plays into Abortion Industry's Deception' (9/4/12), "Planned Parenthood’s claim that only 3 percent of its business is abortion is no different than if a car dealership claimed that it wasn’t really in the business of selling cars because the number of new car sales was only a fraction of its total services provided (financing cars, repairing cars, providing manufacture recommended maintenance for cars, cleaning cars, and so forth). Of course no one would believe such an outrageous claim. Sure, a car dealership does all of those things, but its purpose is to sell cars. The abortion industry is no different. The abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, is about committing abortion. Sure they provide some other services, but when your only self-sustaining revenue source is one thing and you are responsible for 40 percent of that one thing in the entire nation, that is what you are about. Planned Parenthood is about abortion." (See http://aclj.org/media-abortion-distortion-plays-abortion-industry-deception).

Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood Clinic Director, said: "The abortion giant (Planned Parenthood) thinks it is above the law even though it is under criminal investigation for many, many good reasons. It has defrauded Medicaid to the tune of millions of dollars. At my clinic, we didn't have cancer screening quotas to fill. We had abortion quotas to fill, because that's what made us money."

Specializes in Critical Care.

There seems to a popular red herring put forth that the court agreed with Hobby Lobby's view of what drugs are abortifacient, the ruling was about all contraceptives, not just those some might consider abortifacients.

If the court had agreed these four drugs were abortifacient then it would have been a much easier case since the ACA itself provides specific protections to keep those opposed to abortifacients from sharing those costs. And Alito certainly wouldn't have suggested that the remedy is to have the federal government pay for these drugs since that would also be illegal.

Most importantly, the court would have ruled that their finding only applied to those drugs that could be considered abortifacients, which isn't what they did, they ruled all contraceptives could be paid for by other means, such as having the public cover the costs, when employers disagree with cover contraceptives, whether that's because they consider them to abortifacients or they just don't want to cover any contraceptive, abortifacient or not.

The vast majority of the medical and scientific community agrees that a pregnancy is not viable until after implantation, a fertilized is not viable, thus pregnancy does not begin until implantation, although none of that actually had anything to do with the court's decision.

References please. Feel free to quote "the vast majority" you mention. Please keep your comments and references completely SCIENTIFIC, not guesswork or politics. Thank you in advance. Meanwhile I will provide mine:

When pregnancy begins: At conception or implantation?The predominant definition in medical dictionaries is pregnancy begins at fertilization/conception when a zygote is formed from the fusion of sperm and egg. This is consistent with the scientific data which shows life begins at fertilization, i.e. conception, therefore, pregnancy and a new life begin together. Some pro-choice groups claim pregnancy doesn't begin until a week later when the embryo implants itself in the lining of the uterine wall. This play on semantics is primarily based on politics and profit, as it allows abortion providers to mischaracterize technologies which can end a new human life before implantation without having to admit it "ends a pregnancy".

Pro-choice institutions such as the Guttmacher Institute (established by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America) and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) have politicized this 'after-implantation' definition of pregnancy for this reason. However, since "contraception" literally means "against conception," any technology which ends a human life after conception cannot be said to be a 'contraceptive' but an abortifacient, as it doesn't prevent conception and causes an abortion by ending a human life which has already begun. Using any semantic arguments to justify the ending of a human life does nothing to advance women’s' rights but attempts to deceive and manipulate them for the sake of politics and profit.

William J. Lorificen, PhD, made this point clear: "Human embryos begin development following the fusion of definitive male and female gametes during fertilization... This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development." (William J. Lorificen, "Essentials of Embryology", 1998).

Dr. Keith Moore, professor at the University of Toronto, Ontario, and president of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists, stated the following in his medical textbook: "Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual." (Keith L. Moore, PhD, "The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th ed., 2003).

"[The zygote], formed by the union of an oocyte and a sperm, is the beginning of a new human being." (Keith L. Moore, PhD, "Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology, 7th ed., 2008).

Dr. Thomas W. Sadler, Professor and Director of Medical Embryology at the University of Virginia, stated the following in his medical textbook: "Development begins with fertilization, the process by which the male gamete, the sperm, and the female gamete, the oocyte, unite to give rise to a zygote." (T.W. Sadler, "Langmans's Medical Embryology", 10th ed., 2006).

Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

MODERATOR NOTE:

This is about the Supreme court decision not an antiabortion debate. Please stick to topic.

If you wish to start an abortion/religion debate.....Please start another thread

Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.

I feel sometimes like every conversation with a conservative is either about abortion, Benghazi, or Obama being a liar...every topic rolls back into one of those standards. It is frustrating.

I get the impression from some of the posts that it would be celebrated if Planned Parenthood dissolved and was not available in any community anywhere.

Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
I feel sometimes like every conversation with a conservative is either about abortion, Benghazi, or Obama being a liar...every topic rolls back into one of those standards. It is frustrating.

I get the impression from some of the posts that it would be celebrated if Planned Parenthood dissolved and was not available in any community anywhere.

Polarizing topics .....always will be.

As we approach the fourth we need to be thankful for the freedoms that allow is to voice our opinions.

Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
Polarizing topics .....always will be.

As we approach the fourth we need to be thankful for the freedoms that allow is to voice our opinions.

I am thankful.

I am also concerned that there are so many citizens who are comfortable with giving away our individual freedoms and protections one at a time, one group at a time. We are overrun with some perverse attitude that celebrates the "us and them" concept...if things only adversely affect "them" and not "us" then ok. bah

Specializes in Critical Care.
References please. Feel free to quote "the vast majority" you mention. Please keep your comments and references completely SCIENTIFIC, not guesswork or politics. Thank you in advance. Meanwhile I will provide mine:...

In an effort to keep this on topic, I'll reply with this question: If there was any substantive basis or view that these drugs are abortifacient why wasn't that the basis of the case, or at least an argument put forward, since there is much firmer legal ground to make Hobby Lobby's case if it can be argued these are abortifacients? Why would the five conservative catholic justices on the supreme court suggest we directly violate federal law by making abortifacients federally funded? Why wouldn't they separate abortifacient and non-abortifacient drugs in their decision if they believed there was a viable argument that some of these drugs were abortifacient?

And again, I'm still not sure what you think this has to do with the court's decision?

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