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Zubik, West pack punch in W&J victory

GROVE CITY – Senior wide receiver Jesse Zubik and sophomore running back Jordan West combined for five first-half touchdowns Saturday as the No. 23 Washington & Jefferson rolled to a 47-7 nonconference victory at Grove City. Zubik, West pack punch in W&J victory

#Zubik #West pack punch in W&J victory

Submit a comment to protect access to no-copay birth control >>

#HandsOffMyBC #Birth control #Zubik #Not My Bosses Business

The Obama administration's looking for public comments about the future of birth control access. Add your voice and join me in supporting seamless access to no-copay birth control.

#HandsOffMyBC #birth control #Not My bosses business #Zubik

Requiring standalone contraceptive-only coverage would leave in limbo all of the women now guaranteed seamless preventive-care coverage under the Affordable Care Act. And requiring that women affirmatively opt into such coverage would impose precisely the kind of barrier to the delivery of preventive services that Congress sought to eliminate.

Zubik v. Burwell, 578 U.S. __ (2016) (Sotomayor, J., concurring, joined by RBG)

#Zubik #Zubik v. Burwell #birth control #ACA #Affordable Care Act #Obamacare #Sonia Sotomayor #Ruth Bader Ginsburg #notoriousRBG

Here...we fixed it for you.

#birth control #hands off my bc #hands off my birth control #zubik v. burwell #zubik #supreme court

Yet that is precisely the argument behind a landmark case before the Supreme Court this week, Zubik v. Burwell. It’s the latest attempt by religious conservatives to deny women their fundamental right to reproductive health care.

Zubik is a consolidation of seven lawsuits that challenge women’s access to birth control under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It’s the fourth time in four years that opponents of Obamacare have turned to the Supreme Court to overturn or eviscerate the law.

In seeking to hold down overall health care costs, the ACA quite sensibly emphasizes prevention. All health insurance policies, including employer-based plans, must cover preventive services without co-pays or deductibles. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ruled early on that contraception is preventive health care that must be covered under the ACA.

At the same time, the Obama Administration — over the strong objection of the National Organization for Women and others — gave a blanket exemption to “houses of worship” that insist on blocking their women employees from having access to birth control. It didn’t take long for religious nonprofits like colleges, hospitals, and nursing homes to claim they should be allowed to block their women employees from birth control, too. They won an accommodation that gave them an easy way to opt out. All they had to do was notify the government in writing of their refusal to provide coverage, and the government would find a third-party insurer to provide the coverage.

Sounds simple, right? But that wasn’t good enough for fierce opponents of women’s guaranteed access to reproductive health care. They said that the very act of putting their objections in writing made them complicit in providing contraceptive care and violated their religious freedom. But this argument is intellectually insulting. Employers’ supposed religious freedom clearly does not include the right to force their religion on their workers, who have their own First Amendment right to be a believer or not.

The Zubik plaintiffs’ religious freedom argument is also morally bankrupt. An employer that blocks its employees’ access to contraception is engaging in a particularly heinous form of discrimination. Contraception is life saving, life-affirming health care for women. To be blunt: unintended pregnancy is deadly. It is closely correlated with high rates of infant and maternal mortality and morbidity. Unintended pregnancy is also a significant risk factor for domestic violence homicide. There is nothing “pro-life” about restricting birth control.