The Hobby Lobby Debate: Should Your Employer’s Faith Influence Your Options for Medical Treatment?

Written by yvonnethornton on May 12th, 2014

It’s amazing to me sometimes how politicized women’s health has become. Case in point: Republican Mike Huckabee’s recent comments calling women who rely on birth control “victims of their own gender” and saying that the “Obamacare” contraception mandate “insults women… by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government.”

Wow.

Hobby Lobby, a company with 28,000 employees, must agree: they are trying to convince the Supreme Court that they should not have to provide insurance coverage for certain contraceptives for women, ostensibly because it goes against their CEO’s religious beliefs.

In an interesting side note, Hobby Lobby seems to have a problem with sticking to those beliefs consistently anyway, as while they deny IUD coverage to their female employees, they have no problem investing in companies that produce the contraceptive devices.

But this is not about tearing Hobby Lobby down; it’s about building women up, protecting them from tyrants and people who think that they can make medically sound choices for women based on religious faith rather than medical knowledge.

Birth control is one of the most common medications used by women, and protects them and their families from myriad health and financial risks. Exempting birth control from insurance coverage because of personal objections on the part of the CEO of the company is nothing short of ludicrous. Providing coverage for a necessary health service does not communicate religious agreement with it; it communicates compliance with a common-sense health policy.

Make no mistake: what’s at stake in this case (and the many that are sure to follow should Hobby Lobby come out on top) is the health of women and their families all over the country. The billionaires who run Hobby Lobby may not see an issue with forcing women to shoulder the financial burden of birth control on their own, but thousands of low-wage hourly employees will certainly have a different view.

What we’ve got here is not people who are simply trying to do the right thing, but rather people who are completely out of touch with the reality of the economic and health concerns many working families face. Emergency contraception is another method Hobby Lobby doesn’t want to cover, but I’m betting they aren’t going to step in and support those unplanned children when their families cannot provide for them adequately.

Policies involving women’s health (and all health policies, for that matter) must be grounded in medical fact, and not political ideology. Why should you or your daughters or her daughter have to make tough choices about medical care because of some politician or CEO’s personal religious beliefs? As doctors, it’s our job to advocate for women’s health, and that includes having options for birth control.

– Yvonne S. Thornton, M. D., M. P. H

 

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