Can we just say that as policy nerds, getting to hear the Supreme Court cases from the COMFORT OF OUR OWN BEDROOMS (which we are never allowed to leave again) is… dope AF. We love it. Getting to hear some dude argue that people can have a “moral” opposition to birth control pills is… not dope AF.
Look, we get that we make the comparison a lot but: it’s insane how these kinda things are SUCH MORAL INDIGNITIES when they involve uterus-havers yet we don’t see the Little Sisters of the Poor crying about having to provide boner pills to their employees. I just wanna be a trophy wife who gets to live in peace without having to fuck my old ass husband.
But anyway, ICYMI (because again, life is a NIGHTMARE NOW, we understand), let’s just briefly go over Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, because it’s, let’s see, SUBTLE wouldn’t be a fair term but… deviously very bad while maybe on its surface only seeming really bad.
So LSOTP already has a religious exemption meaning they don’t *have* to provide birth control (CUZ IT’S SUCH A BURDEN WE GET IT PROVIDING HEALTHCARE TO EMPLOYEES IS A HUGE FUCKING BURDEN) to their workers. Kinda like, OK you win, why we still talking about this. But they like, didn’t want there to even be any way in any conceivable universe where their employees could get birth control and it would somehow be because of them. But really, what they want isn’t the thing at stake here.
Slate does a good job of explaining what is at stake:
[T]he actual dispute here is over new rules promulgated by the Trump administration to broaden the kinds of employers permitted to opt out of the contraception mandate, for reasons religious or “moral,” and the states (led by Pennsylvania) that do not want to bear the increased cost of the exemptions.
DING DING DING, the big bad part. So this case is deciding if just like, any old nonprofit or for profit can request a “no birth control please” for “MORAL” — and let me tell you you better believe “moral” just means whatever they want it to mean — reasons. And the states are like “Yeah uh, we don’t want to pay for you to be a bad employer.”
Our point here is that maybe you don’t get to decide if it’s moral for ME to take birth control, person I work for (lol well not specifically me, Lizz gives out birth control as holiday presents).
And maybe just like, we can all take a step back here and realize that ABORTION IS MORAL. You know who realized that: THE PRICE IS RIGHT! They donated, as part of a special charity week, $100k to Planned Parenthood. Kinda seems like if a show that has you guess how much popcorn machines cost can see that there’s moral value in reproductive healthcare… maybe SCOTUS CAN TOO!