Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “there should be a real outcry” against the Supreme Court’s much-anticipated Hobby Lobby ruling, which now gives closely held companies run by owners with religious convictions the ability to opt out of a handful of Obamacare birth control mandates.
Mrs. Clinton, in a Facebook discussion of the ruling, called the ruling “deeply disturbing” and said she disagreed with both the “reasoning as well as the conclusion” the justices settled upon, the New York Daily News reported.
Mrs. Clinton went on: “It’s very troubling that a sales clerk … who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health care plan because her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.”
The former first lady was asked about her opinion during a live Facebook chat she held at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, the newspaper reported.
“It’s the first time that our court has said that a closely held corp. has the rights of a person when it comes to religion freedom,” she wrote in her Facebook post. “Which means that the corp., closely held, often family based not exclusively but usually, can impose their religious beliefs on their employees and of course denying women contraception as part of their health care plan is exactly that. There should be a real outcry against this kind of decision. And there will be many more now.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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