[Editor’s Note: In Jean Ardell’s Left of Center column on April 4, she wrote that the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the Hobby Lobby case about whether a corporation can invoke its religious values to deny full health coverage under the Affordable Care Act to its employees. Last week, a letter to the editor from Bill Dunlap responded to Jean’s column.]
The Hobby Lobby case is about a public for profit Corporation. It is not a privately held company. A corporation isn’t a person. A corporation doesn’t hold religious beliefs. The law already provides a waiver for churches and religious affiliated nonprofits.
Mr. Dunlap, Hobby Lobby currently willingly provides contraception coverage to its employees. Hobby Lobby sounds like a great employer. Good benefits and above average pay but the Corporation named Hobby Lobby is defying the law. This corporation does not want to provide what it considers after the fact contraception which it mistakenly portray as abortions. Science which is sometimes an inconvenience for a modern righty disputes that contention.
I have never understood the right that professes individual liberty always wanting to tell women what to do with their bodies and are always up in arms about who people love. It’s simply counterintuitive.
It was a California Republican, Richard Nixon, with bipartisan support who passed the law that partially funds Planned Parenthood. People who then called themselves conservatives saw it as a way to keep people off welfare and reduce overall government social welfare funding. Made good pragmatic economic sense then and now. Perhaps the subsidies for Planned Parenthood will be reduced because for the first time in our history the poor, especially the working poor, will have access to affordable healthcare.
Abortions represent three percent of what Planned Parenthood does. You wouldn’t surmise that from Mr. Dunlap’s misleading comment. He would make you believe Planned Parenthood does only one thing. The remaining 97 percent involves services like cancer screening, HIV screening, counseling and contraception. The right never talks about the majority of the other desperately needed services planned parenthood performs primarily for poor women who have had no place else to go.
When GOP controlled states stop funding Planned Parenthood it impacts much more than abortions. The federal government has already excluded abortions from federal funding.
To end with a partial quote I cannot recall who said it first; Mr Dunlap has a right to his own opinions but he doesn’t have a right to his own facts.
John Lindseth
Corona del Mar
