Eric Francis

Feisty young women protesting for “religious freedom” today (albeit based on a complete misunderstanding of the concept) have no idea what their mothers and grandmothers went through to get the modest rights that women currently have, such as the right to own property or work without the consent of their husbands. In the 1970s a woman could be turned down for a bank loan for being of child-bearing age — with no other disqualifications present. I have been analyzing this photo all week and keep noticing the hashtag #womenincontrol — as if sexuality is associated with being out of control, rather than reproductive rights being associated with the right of women to control their own bodies. Photo by Doug Mills for The New York Times.

Dear Friend and Reader:

On one level, people get it.

If the Supreme Court can rule that a for-profit corporation can ignore a federal mandate to provide health insurance that includes birth control coverage to women based on an ethical objection, then the government must respect everyone’s ethical values.

This is called Equal Protection Under the Law. American law, by its own mandate, applies to everyone equally, that is, to all persons similarly situated. Therefore, the court has affirmed everyone’s rights to freedom of religion, the core idea of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993 that it affirmed in Monday’s ruling in the infamous Hobby Lobby case. RFRA is one of those Clinton/Gingrich-era laws, similar to the now-defunct Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), laws that were designed to kiss up to right-wing voters.

It warmed my Quaker heart to see memes go around the Internet linking the court’s ruling to someone who refuses to pay taxes out of objection to war. If the Ten Commandments are clear about one thing, it is “thou shalt not kill.” And if war is not moral, it’s no more ethical to pay someone (using my tax dollars) to go in my place.

On another level, people get how hypocritical it is for five Roman Catholic men to decide that a for-profit corporation has “religious freedom” and thus the right to deny insurance coverage for birth control for women.

If their loyalty to the Pope superseded their commitment to the Constitution, they should have recused themselves from the case. Back in 1960 when John F. Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic presidential candidate, people claimed to worry that his loyalty would be to the Vatican and not to his oath of office. So much for that.

Others have noted that the birth control methods in question are not forms of abortion, which is the supposed moral basis of the objection by Hobby Lobby. An IUD (intrauterine device) does not terminate a pregnancy and an unimplanted zygote is not a fetus — but who cares; while we’re denying global warming we may as well deny biology. Nobody who has gone through Abstinence Only indoctrination will care.