Hobby Lobby: The Derp Never Stops

Darleen Click, I’m sure your brief post on the challenge to the ACA’s employer contraception non-mandate will be all too representative!

Seven words to the Left Feminist Fascists

I think we can all agree that if there was anything central to fascism, it was that the insurance that women pay for or receive in lieu of wages actually cover things that are important to the health of women. If you don’t understand this, you probably haven’t spent much time at the Evil Sluts and Their Minimum Coverage Requirements Museum in D.C..

their “bosses” won’t pay for their birth control

It’s the insurance that employees earn as compensation, not their employers per se, that will pay for birth control when companies provide insurance that meets the minimum requirements. But I’m having trouble focusing on this particular terrible argument because I’m fascinated by the scare quotes around “bosses.” Clearly, when Hobby Lobby employees think that the Greens set policy for their chain, they’re just imagining things! You’re the boss, if you want it. I don’t know if this is a thing on the right, but either way I’ve rarely seen anything that captures the particular mix of servility and authoritarianism that characterizes contemporary Republican ideology this well.

– including abortifacients –

The idea that any form of contraception is an “abortifacient” doesn’t even rise to the level of junk science. But you knew that, so read this about the origins of this particular bit of lunacy from Jamelle Bouie.

it constitutes denial of access &

Again, nobody thinks that carving out exemptions to minimum coverage requirements will represent a total denial of access to contraception, although it would certainly make contraception less accessible for some less affluent women.

“rights” to free stuff

Again with the scare quotes. First, the insurance your employers gets tax benefits for compensating you with instead of wages isn’t “free”; the employee earns it. Second, the minimum coverage is an actual statutory right, not a “right.” What’s amazing about this particular line of argument — that statutory rights aren’t “real” rights — is that the Hobby Lobby’s challenge is based on a statutory right. If the rights created by Congress are just meaningless fake “rights,” then we can all go home because RFRA is just symbolic legislation that confers no legal rights, and so nobody has standing to bring a suit. (There is also a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion, but based on current 1st Amendment law a challenge to the contraception coverage requirement would be frivolous, and properly so.)

And now, the punchline:

Pay for your own damn coat hanger.

Hahaha, remember when women who didn’t have the wealth or connections to get abortions on the grey market used to get maimed and killed when they got abortions? Hiiiii-larious, I tell you! I laughed like I was watching the Half-Hour News Hour! In the meantime, make sure to let Click know how she should spend her salary, since according to her she didn’t earn it…