OPINION:
Liberals are objecting to the Supreme Court’s ruling that requiring closely held companies, such as Hobby Lobby, to pay for methods of contraception violates the corporations’ religious freedom. In fact, the ruling has little to do with contraception but has much to do instead with upholding the Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed into law by President Clinton in 1993.
This act reassured citizens of their religious rights. It is also important to note that out of the 20 contraceptives offered in Obamacare, only four did Hobby Lobby find objectionable because they can cause abortion of fertilized embryos.
Here is my main concern: President Obama, through implementation of executive action, has exempted not-for-profit businesses that object from paying for contraception. In those cases, the insurance companies now pick up the tab for contraception without filtering down costs to those not-for-profits. Case solved. Mr. Obama could do the same in this case, and the problem of women not getting their contraception would be remedied. Yet he instead says he will ask Congress to handle it.
I find the case against Hobby Lobby so disturbing because it seems so obviously political, a plan to further pit the parties against one another and to give the public the false impression that the Catholic Church and anyone else who opposes the contraception mandate wants to put women back into the Dark Ages.
The Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, was courageous in standing up for what its members believe. They asked the Supreme Court to recognize, uphold and preserve their First Amendment rights, and that is what the court did. We should all be celebrating. This was a good day for America.
NANCY MENZIES-KREUZER
Glen Ellyn, Ill.
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