Stephan: Ultra-religious conservatives are screwed up sexually. It can range from celibacy to polygamy, but it is always dysfunctional, often nasty, and frequently punishing. And beneath everything, for the Abrahamic religions, it has the added tone of subjugating women.
You may find it hard to believe that in the second decade of the 21st century in a modern high technology culture that people are still trying to deprive women of access to contraceptives, but it is true, as this report explains.
Conservative religious women think of women who do not share their views as hussies, or whores, and conservative religious men don't like working with women who are their equals or, even more threatening, their bosses. What to do? Why take away their right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and, even better, their access to contraception by deleting coverage for it from their healthcare.
A woman who can't get an abortion, or who can't even plan her pregnancies if she is sexually active in marriage or out, is at constant risk of becoming pregnant unexpectedly. And therefore unable to plan a career, or pursue anything uninterruptedly, or threaten any insecure man.
Under Trump, the Little Sisters became the public face of defending the administration’s birth control rules. Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty
Conservatives have spent the better part of a decade arguing the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit, which provides insurance coverage for a host of contraception without additional cost or co-pay, violates religious freedom principles. Those efforts have had mixed results. Despite two turns before the U.S. Supreme Court, dozens of lower court orders, and a handful of executive orders from President Trump, the benefit remains in place—but employers who object to it can avoid complying with it.
This week, the Roberts Court will consider taking up a case that could settle the birth control benefit’s fate once and for all.
The case is The Little Sisters of the Poor Jeanne Jugan Residence v. California. Yes, that’s right. The Sisters are at it again.
To understand how yet another case like this could end up before the Roberts Court, let’s revisit for a moment the history of the contraception mandate. Originally proposed in 2012, the birth […]
