Four Ways to Show How the "Religious Liberty" Claim Against Contraceptive Coverage Is Nonsense

From RH Reality Check: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/02/26/why-religious-liberty-claim-is-nonsense

by Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check

February 26, 2012

Nancy Scola has a piece at Salon on the Republican delusion that the newly loud anti-choice war on contraception can somehow be repackaged as “religious liberty” and sold to the public, accomplishing the real goal--undermining women’s fundamental right not to just basic health care but also to make their own sexual and family decisions--and dressing it up as a fight for freedom. The strategy is to cast “religious liberty” as such a broad right, held only by fundamentalist Christians, that it actually extends far past their noses and right into your face and beyond, into your uterus. In this view, women securing equal rights to fair compensation from employers and to comprehensive basic health care coverage is framed as a violation of the right of religious misogynists to control and punish them. It’s a bold tactic, and while many liberals, who are used to rolling over for the right and letting them have whatever they want, fear it’s going to work, there’s reason to be skeptical.

Well, some reason to be skeptical. It is true that if we roll over and let the right define religious liberty as the right to interfere with other people’s personal and religious choices, then we will lose. But if we fight, we can win. We just need to be clear on the arguments here. So I put together a quick rundown of how to argue for women’s basic right to equal protection under the Constitution in light of these new HHS regulations.

1) Women’s right to be sexual beings is protected under the First Amendment’s religious liberty clause. Yes, Catholic bishops and their teeny group of avid followers have a right to believe that God wants women to either be virgins or non-stop baby factories. But women have a right to believe that God has a different plan for them---or to not believe in a God at all. Women have equal rights to their own religious beliefs around sex and reproduction. The Catholic bishops demanding the right to force women not to be able to go directly through insurers for contraception coverage---in essence, giving them extra-governmental power to levy a fine against women for being sexual---is a direct violation of a woman’s religious freedom. These employers cannot require women to attend Catholic mass as a condition of their employment, so why should they be able to require women to pay what amounts to a penance for what the church teaches is a sin as a condition of their employment? Religious liberty exists for all Americans, even women.

Continue reading at: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/02/26/why-religious-liberty-claim-is-nonsense