Religious Liberty?

[bennyboy]

I understand the reasoning but I think you are leaving out the fact that a business is not a doctor and that a business doesn't write prescriptions nor make medical decisions.  If the business wants to offer health care then they should do that and if they don't want to offer health care then that is fine.  Cherry picking a patient/medical provider procedures or prescriptions based on how they feel is not sound.  This is based on me doing 5 min of research and not being able to find a plan that doesn't include contraception unless it has specially exempted, not sure if that even saved Hobby Lobby any money.

I think Christians don't generally see pregnancy as unhealthy, which is why they don't think preventing it belongs in a health care plan. They see reproduction as the natural outcome of the sexual act, and they don't want to be complicit in paying for attempts to thwart nature. What's worse, they see God's design in that nature, and it is clear in their religion that attempts to thwart it are sins. Surely, if their unwillingness to participate in the sins of others (as their religion has long seen it) is legislated against, then the separation of church and state has been broken, and the American constitution needs to be rewritten.

From this perspective, let me draw an analogy to another biological process whose purpose is set aside: eating. Let's say an employee wants access to stomach staples, special drugs that cause food to be undigested, etc. because they want to be thin. Should the health-care plan pay for this? Should the employee say, "Fuck you and your religious bullshit, who are you to tell me I can't eat a pizza when I choose to? Who are you to prevent me from living the life I want, and doing what I want with my body?" Nobody is preventing you-- but they expect you to shoulder the burden for the likely outcome of your actions. The predictable result of eating pizza is gaining weight-- so if you want to eat the pizza and stay thin, you'll have to arrange on your own dime to avoid that conequence.

That's the thing about pregnancy. It's the predictable outcome of a willful and deliberate act, not a virus or bacterial invasion or a genetic deficiency beyond people's control. That people want to have sex, but do not want to suffer its consequences, shouldn't really be a company's problem. Yes, I know the outrage will be there: "We NEED sex, it's an important part of a married relationship, it has an effect on brain chemistry, who are you to tell me what to do?" etc. But people can make those same arguments about almost any activity: eating, smoking, surfing, weekend orgies, playing Scrabble. Will you extend all those people extra benefits?