Will the Religious Right Succeed? An Examination of the Hercules Ruling on the Birth Control Benefit

by Imani Gandy, Team Uterati/Angry Black Lady Chronicles
July 31, 2012 - 9:29am

In May of this year, Jan Brewer signed into law Arizona HB 2625, a bill that would allow employers to opt out of the policy under the Affordable Care Act ensuring that all insurance policies cover preventive health care services for women, including contraception, without a co-pay.

It's a simple concept, really: contraception is health care. Health insurance plans offer coverage for health care. Ergo, health insurance plans should offer coverage for contraception. Ta da!

Laws like Arizona HB 2625 undercut this simple concept. According to supporters of laws like HB 2625, contraception is of the devil. And because the Catholic Church's official position on contraception is that it is sinful, the Church seems personally offended at the notion that any employer be required by the government to exist in the same space as women who are using their hard-earned wages to pay for contraceptive and other health care services that are anathema to church doctrine.

A couple months ago, I published a piece that described what I saw as a dangerous slippery slope regarding Arizona HB 2625 (and laws like it), which permit employers to claim some sort of religious affiliation and thus excuse themselves from providing critical health-care services to women employed by them.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/07/30/colorado-judge-blocks-contraception-mandate-in-favor-%E2%80%9Creligiously-affiliated%E2%80%9D-e-0