Hobby Horse

This Hobby Lobby controversy has gone on for far too long.

I'm going to refer you to Megan McArdle's excellent series of editorials on the subject, and then add a few words.  Then you need to shut up and get on with your life.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-02/answers-to-all-your-hobby-lobby-questions

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-30/what-the-hobby-lobby-ruling-really-means

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/sunday-commentary/20140711-behind-the-left-right-impasse-on-the-hobby-lobby-case.ece

Here's the sitch.

1.  NO RIGHTS ARE BEING DENIED.  To anybody.  By anyone.  At least in the context of this decision.

There is no "right" to contraceptive care.  That it may be a need for some people doesn't qualify it as a right. Ron Paul said it quite well already, and I can't really add to that, other than to point out that the reason we have one word for "needs" and another for "rights" is that they are two different things.

As Paul points out, "women's rights" is a non sequitur from the start.  As I've frequently pointed out in the context of the abortion debate, there are no niche rights.  Everybody has the same rights, simply by virtue of being human.  They're not provided for by the market; they're not provided for by the government; they're granted by God, or Nature, or the Universe, or whatever you personally regard as your Creator.  (They could be seen, in an agnostic sense, for instance, as deriving from society, in the sense that you're a social animal, and therefore a product of society; this jibes well with a common negative-rights view that rights, whatever their source, have to be demanded and defined--"enumerated"--and, once defined, defended from the government, in order to have any practical existence.)  Rights aren't granted by government; they're wrested from it.  Rights, as stated by the Declaration of Independence, are inalienable.  There are no rights that anyone can have that someone else cannot have, by virtue of special status such as gender.  It follows that there are no "women's rights" or "men's rights."  To insist that a woman, by virtue of her anatomy and physiology, has a "right" to contraception is to acknowledge that a man, by virtue of his greater (on average) physical strength, has a "right" to jobs that she does not, or to a salary range that she does not.

To become pregnant, then, isn't a right, but a privilege.  By the exact same token, to obtain an abortion, or a feminine contraceptive, is also a privilege.  Anything that a woman can do but that a man cannot, is, necessarily, a privilege.  But this issue goes deeper.  Nothing that is a market product or service can be a right.  Nothing, in other words, that imposes an obligation on anybody else, can be a right.

Contraception is not a right.  Abortion is not a right (Roe v. Wade notwithstanding; in later posts I'll discuss in greater detail the fallacy of accepting that the Court has the legitimate power to declare a right to exist).   Nothing that a store or an employer or an insurance carrier can provide for you is a right.

Period.

Further, the employer isn't denying anything, right or otherwise.  Not covering something on insurance is not the same as "denying" that something.  Hobby Lobby isn't prohibiting its employees from seeking out those products outside the purview of their insurance coverage.  Hobby Lobby isn't buying up all the abortifacient products from local drug stores.  Hobby Lobby isn't lobbying Congress to declare those products illegal (contrary to Nancy Pelosi's latest gaffe).  Nothing is being banned, so nothing is being denied.

Nor does this refusal to cover those contraceptive methods amount to any kind of hardship.  Hobby Lobby compensates its employees well.  No Hobby Lobby employee earns minimum wage; they all earn substantially more.

2.  NOBODY'S RELIGIOUS VIEWS ARE BEING FORCED ON ANYONE.  The decision doesn't grant carte blanche for all corporations to impose decisions of a religious nature on their employees.  The language of the decision is clear:  it permits closely-held companies to opt out of covering services that are morally abhorrent to their holders.  Hobby Lobby is a family company, not a multinational corporation.  And the family has no interest in imposing religious or moral viewpoints on its employees.  Of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptive methods, 16 are still covered on the company's insurance.  The four methods that have been removed are those that are, or can be perceived as, abortifacients.

This is another controversial topic, with some blurry edges.  The salient point is that the First Amendment protects freedom of conscience.  It allows citizens to believe and say what they wish to believe and say.  It prevents the federal government from imposing religious and ideological views on its citizens.  And, as such, it protects employers from being subject to the more onerous consequences of ill-conceived legislation such as the Affordable Care Act.  The Amendment does not, in other words, protect facts; it protects beliefs.  And whether or not you personally believe that the four contraceptive methods in question are abortifacients, the Green family believes that they are.

Are they justified in this belief?  That's a separate issue, but it's one I've delved into nonetheless.  For reasons of space, let's limit our research to just one of the Four Methods, the one known as "Plan B."  (If you find this insufficient an argument, say so in the comments and I'll follow through on the others.)

What I've found--from a variety of sources--is that although Plan B does, in fact, rely primarily on preventing fertilization, there are other mechanisms involved as well.  The mechanism that's relevant to our discussion here is thinning of the uterine wall, which results in the inability or hampered ability of the fertilized ovum to successfully implant.

There's a great deal of confusion about the distinction between "contraception" and the more general category "birth control."  Contraception prevents conception.  Abortifacients encourage or cause abortion.  All of these methods control birth.  One fact that clouds the issue is that the onset of pregnancy doesn't, strictly speaking, coincide with conception.  Sources disagree on this, but medically speaking, pregnancy is thought to begin with implantation.  Since this can occur days after fertilization has taken place, conception and pregnancy effectively mark the start of two distinct processes.  Conception is the start of the process that results in the emergence of a new organism; pregnancy is the start of the process that results in that organism's birth.  Fertilization results in the reorganization of the ovum's nuclear DNA, converting two distinct haploid genomes into one, novel and completely unique, human genome.  It is the fusion of two cells into one organism.  Life isn't "created," mind you; it was already there.  What is "created" is a new human being.  A new organism, with human phylogeny and human ontogeny, now exists where previously there was only a cell of the mother's body.  The new organism is not part of the mother's body; the resulting cell cannot operate or survive anywhere in her tissues.  The new diploid genome is manufacturing proteins that are utterly unique to that organism, and which would be attacked by the mother's immune system if it weren't being protected via isolation in the uterine environment.  It is a new Homo sapiens, and its age, physical shape, and state of existence are absolutely immaterial to that definition.  You can no more define membership in the species by the adult form than you can by the newborn form, the adolescent form, the geriatric form, or the embryonic.  They're all human, and all equally valid as members of the species.  You don't "become" a human at some predetermined point.  You're human from the moment of conception.

However, the mother is not yet pregnant until that new organism successfully implants in the uterine wall.  This is precisely the process that Plan B, and the other three methods, prevent.  In so doing, they result in the destruction of a human life.

Folks, that's abortion.  The Greens are absolutely justified in their view.  I'll hold off on the supporting cites until the end of the post, however, in order to maintain my forward momentum.  But note that my sources include the National Institutes of Health web site, as well as the site of the manufacturer of Plan B.

3.  THIS IS A VICTORY FOR LIBERTY.  This is what the Amendments in the Bill of Rights exist to do, folks:  preserve liberty against the constant onslaught of government force.  You're still free to use any method of contraception available (and if you don't like the idea of contraception being criminalized, then you need to take your grievances to the FDA, not to Hobby Lobby).

4.  THIS IS A CONSEQUENCE OF GOVERNMENT ACTIVITY.  The ACA, like all omnibus legislation, has imposed a world of unintended consequences that will be continuing to make themselves apparent for decades to come.  This is what you get when you authorize the government to interfere with the market:  some of its policies will conflict with others.  In a free market, one in which the individual is permitted full self-ownership, including absolute property rights, this kind of conflict would be easily resolved at the individual level:  the consumer / employee / voter simply makes another choice.  But here, because we've delegated some portion of our property rights to the federal government to dispose on our behalf, we're put in the position of having to ask it to intervene when conflicts arise.

Get used to it.  There will be many more issues like this unfolding as the ACA's tendrils sink deeper into the marketplace.



Citations:

http://health.howstuffworks.com/sexual-health/contraception/morning-after1.htm

A drug could lower the risk of pregnancy in one of three ways:
It could kill all of the sperm after ejaculation.
It could prevent the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.
It could either prevent or delay the release of the egg. Levonorgestrel takes this third path.
When you purchase Plan B, you get two pills. Each pill contains 0.75 milligrams of levonorgestrel. You take the first pill as soon as possible after unprotected sex, and you take the second pill 12 hours later.
Although scientists aren't completely sure how it works, they believe that levonorgestrel prevents pregnancy either by stopping the ovulation process or by disrupting the ability of sperm and egg to meet in the fallopian tubes. Some speculate that the drug may prevent the fertilized egg from implanting as well, perhaps by making the uterine lining less receptive to the egg.


http://www.webmd.com/women/guide/plan-b

How Does Plan B One-Step Work?

Depending upon where you are in your cycle, Plan B One-Step may work in one of these ways:

It may prevent or delay ovulation.
It may interfere with fertilization of an egg.
It is also possible that this type of emergency birth control prevents implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus by altering its lining.


http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/contraception/conditioninfo/Pages/types.aspx

Hormonal methods of birth control use hormones to regulate or stop ovulation and prevent pregnancy. Ovulation is the biological process in which the ovary releases an egg, making it available for fertilization. Hormones can be introduced into the body through various methods, including pills, injections, skin patches, transdermal gels, vaginal rings, intrauterine systems, and implantable rods. Depending on the types of hormones that are used, these pills can prevent ovulation; thicken cervical mucus, which helps block sperm from reaching the egg; or thin the lining of the uterus. Health care providers prescribe, monitor, and administer hormonal contraceptives.


http://ec.princeton.edu/news/preven.html

"The only definitive scientific evidence indicates that the birth control pills in the PREVENTM Emergency Contraceptive Kit work by preventing or delaying ovulation. It has been theorized that birth control pills may also prevent fertilization of an egg, if one has been released from the ovary, or that they may produce changes in the lining of the uterus that could prevent implantation of a fertilized egg", said Carolyn Westhoff, MD, Associate Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology and Public Health at Columbia University. "The pills will not work if a woman is already pregnant and will not affect a pregnancy."


http://www.drugs.com/mtm/preven-ec.html

"Ethinyl estradiol and levonorgestrel are used together in this product as an emergency contraceptive (EC) to prevent pregnancy after contraceptive failure or unprotected intercourse. Ethinyl estradiol and levonorgestrel prevent ovulation (the release of an egg from an ovary), disrupt fertilization (joining of the egg and sperm), and inhibit implantation (attachment of a fertilized egg to the uterus)."