“Separation of church and state” is a phrase we usually read about in history and government textbooks--but it’s as relevant now as ever. Ever since the Hobby Lobby ruling last year, which allowed the religious owners of a secular business to refuse insurance coverage of contraception to employees based on moral beliefs, it seems like access to women’s healthcare is becoming harder and harder to come by. Since Hobby Lobby, many similar cases looking to deny birth control coverage to women have been filed.
Last week, a ruling was made in a case brought forth by the March For Life Education and Defense Fund, a secular, anti-abortion nonprofit, against the provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires employers’ insurance plans to cover birth control. Religious institutions have always been exempt from this provision, but the new ruling suggests that secular institutions whose owners hold certain moral beliefs should be exempt as well. The opinion written by federal Judge Richard J. Leon says that this must be the case because religious institutions cannot be treated differently from secular ones.
According to Judge Leon’s ruling, employers can refuse contraception coverage based on any beliefs, even if they have nothing to do with religion. His reasoning is convoluted, and contradictory to a previous ruling made by the Supreme Court that states, in black and white: when the government “acts with the proper purpose of lifting a regulation that burdens the exercise of religion…. [there is] no reason to require that the exemption come packaged with benefits to secular entities.” Once again, the anti-contraception advocates are making their point---and, once again, they’ve got to totally defy logic in order to do so.