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posted by janrinok on Wednesday March 26 2014, @10:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the companies==people-er-does-not-compute dept.

gishzida writes:

"According to a Reuters report Supreme Court signals support for corporate religious claims, "The U.S. Supreme Court appeared poised on Tuesday to open the door to companies' religious-based objections to government regulations as justices weighed whether business owners can object to part of President Barack Obama's healthcare law. From the article:

During a 90-minute oral argument, 30 minutes more than usual, a majority of the nine justices appeared ready to rule that certain for-profit entities have the same religious rights to object as individuals do. A ruling along those lines would likely only apply to closely held companies. As in most close cases of late, Justice Anthony Kennedy will likely be the deciding vote. Based on his questions, it was unclear whether the court would ultimately rule that the companies had a right to an exemption from the contraception provision of President Barack Obama's 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

The dozens of companies involved in the litigation do not all oppose every type of birth control. Some object only to emergency contraceptive methods, such as the so-called morning-after pill, which they view as akin to abortion.

The case marks the second time Obamacare has featured prominently before the Supreme Court. In 2012, the court upheld by a 5-4 vote the constitutionality of the act's core feature requiring people to get health insurance. Although the case has no bearing on the overall healthcare law, it features its own volatile mix of religious rights and reproductive rights. A capacity crowd filled the marble courtroom, while outside hundreds of demonstrators, most of them women, protested loudly in an early spring snowstorm.

We already know that the SCOTUS thinks corporations are citizens, do you think the SCOTUS should allow corporations to have religious beliefs too?"

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Nobuddy on Thursday March 27 2014, @03:58AM

    by Nobuddy (1626) on Thursday March 27 2014, @03:58AM (#21910)

    The instant a Muslim owned company requires their female employees to cover their head, all the supporters of this will burst in to flames and march on the SCOTUS complaining about legislating from the bench.

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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by edIII on Thursday March 27 2014, @04:14AM

    by edIII (791) on Thursday March 27 2014, @04:14AM (#21919)

    Interesting.

    Who is the more unreasonable party?

    Muslims controlling women's hair or Christians controlling women's vaginas?

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 27 2014, @06:13AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 27 2014, @06:13AM (#21941)
      But seems like the most of the abortion requests are the result of women not controlling their own vaginas. Perhaps that's the main problem?

      If you want to continue treating humans as a special case, you might have to treat human embryos as special too. Many countries still don't make it easy to kill adult humans even if they supposedly can't feel pain, aren't conscious etc. So where should we draw the line?

      As technology progresses it may get harder to define what human is, I'd say err on the "safe side" , even if you have to use seemingly stupid definitions. The alternatives might be worse.

      Don't want Skynet to recycle you just because you weren't human enough, or because stupid humans told Skynet that humans aren't special.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday March 27 2014, @04:36PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Thursday March 27 2014, @04:36PM (#22110)

        most of the abortion requests are the result of women not controlling their own vaginas.

        Sometimes it's men forcing a woman to relinquish control of their own vagina. Sometimes the woman isn't in a position to give any kind of consent because she's 13 years old. Sometimes it's women who are taken advantage of when passed out. Sometimes it's women trusting men who, say, promise to marry them and then don't. Sometimes it's women who thought they could have a child and then it turns out that trying would kill them. Sometimes it's women who have decided to sleep with their boss in order to keep their job. And also remember that it takes two to tango, so even in cases where none of that coercion happened the men who impregnate women are as responsible for the consequences as women.

        The fact is that you know nothing of what the situation is of people deciding to get an abortion. You know nothing about why they arrived at that decision, or how, or who they consulted. Among the women I've known that have told me about it, they consulted friends, pastors, parents, the man who got them pregnant, and a couple of hotlines. Planned Parenthood is very clear that they make sure that people who come in to get an abortion understand what other alternatives might be available. This isn't a case of someone waking up one day and deciding "Oh, well, I guess I have to have another abortion.", it's a case of somebody discovering that they have to make a terrible choice.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 28 2014, @02:03AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 28 2014, @02:03AM (#22341) Journal

          Sometimes it's men forcing a woman to relinquish control of their own vagina. Sometimes the woman isn't in a position to give any kind of consent because she's 13 years old. Sometimes it's women who are taken advantage of when passed out. Sometimes it's women trusting men who, say, promise to marry them and then don't. Sometimes it's women who thought they could have a child and then it turns out that trying would kill them. Sometimes it's women who have decided to sleep with their boss in order to keep their job. And also remember that it takes two to tango, so even in cases where none of that coercion happened the men who impregnate women are as responsible for the consequences as women.

          None of which actually gets fixed by the health insurance policy in question. Free birth control isn't any better than cheap birth control, if your rapist doesn't use it.

          • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 28 2014, @01:27PM

            by Thexalon (636) on Friday March 28 2014, @01:27PM (#22496)

            If a woman is using birth control pills, then if she's raped she's much less likely to get pregnant, regardless of what decisions the rapist makes. (And the idea that certain elected officials have been spreading about pregnancy not being a possible outcome of rape are simply laughably false.)

            Of course, none of that diminishes the fact that rape is a serious crime, and that a woman on birth control pills who is raped is at risk of HIV and other STDs.

            --
            The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 29 2014, @12:24PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 29 2014, @12:24PM (#22875) Journal

              If a woman is using birth control pills, then if she's raped she's much less likely to get pregnant, regardless of what decisions the rapist makes.

              So every woman between puberty and menopause should be on birth control just because they might get raped? Is that in a guideline somewhere?

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 29 2014, @12:26PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 29 2014, @12:26PM (#22876) Journal

                Damn it. I keep using those "quote" tags instead of the "blockquote" HTML tags. This is so similar to Slashdot that I habitually use the tag shorthands that I use for Slashdot. I suppose I should preview first.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Geezer on Thursday March 27 2014, @09:26AM

      by Geezer (511) on Thursday March 27 2014, @09:26AM (#21959)

      Equally unreasonable, since the core concepts resulting in said behaviors are, for all practical purposes, the same.

      Muslims and Christians alike seek to control a lot more than hair and pussy.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 27 2014, @03:29PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday March 27 2014, @03:29PM (#22084)

      Why do we need to pick one? I say we defenestrate both of them.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"