The Dirty 100 and the immaturity of NOW

At least twenty-four (24!) of the persons, businesses, or organizations named by the National Organization for Women as the "Dirty 100" are themselves Catholic, owned by Catholics, or made up of Catholics (there may be more; I know one the businesses is Catholic and I suspect others are, as well). Shockingly - and bizarrely - the Little Sisters of the Poor have, as it were, made the cut.

Now, pay attention (yes, that was purposeful): Notice the percentage of the groups that are Catholic: at least 24%. Yet we are to believe that our secular society does not have an anti-Catholic prejudice? Get real. And wake up.

Why are these the Dirty 100? Because they do not want to pay for their employees birth control, sterilizations, or abortifacients. How vile and cruel they are. You would think the NOW would be demanding instead that businesses provide mammograms for free.

An especially curious aspect of this list is its placement on NOW's web site: you can "take action" and "Ditch the Dirty 100" before you can even see the list NOW has compiled (you even have to click on "take action" to be able to click on the list).

The link to the list is at the very bottom of the page - beneath a declaration that "I do not believe that the religious beliefs of an employer trump the religious freedoms and bodily autonomy of their company’s female employees" and that "I cannot support businesses, nonprofits, and religious entities that do not respect the reproductive rights of their employees" and a spot for your contact information. It is almost as if NOW doesn't actually want you to know who the Dirty 100 are.

To my mind, this shows not only a certain mindlessness on the part of those who support the creation of such a list and insanely think that of all of the life-saving medicines and treatments available to women that only contraception should be free of charge, but also a certain immaturity on the part of NOW's leaders (and former leaders).

This immaturity also comes across in a recent - and impressive - interview conducted by Fox News' Megyn Kelly with Patricia Ireland, a former president of NOW:

Megyn's suggestion to call the list "groups with whom we disagree" is an excellent, reasonable, and civil suggestion, one met with disdain and mockery. Ireland claims she has "the right to say these people are wrong and to not patronize them," yet she patronizes them ("Bless their hearts") throughout the interview. It only shows her insincerity.

This immaturity is further shown by Ireland's refusal to answer Kelly's direct questions and her failure to acknowledge when Kelly shows her to be incorrect.

In the end, I suspect this campaign against the Dirty 100 will prove ineffective for NOW.

The "Hobby Lobby case": What's it really about?

As part of the liberal-minded world erupts in tremendous anger over the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. et al (going so far as the encourage people to engage in sexual relations inside Hobby Lobby stores and even to burn the stores down), it might be good to take a breath and consider what is really at the heart of the matter.

Though many of those dissatisfied with the decision of the Supreme Court claim the decision restricts access to contraception and harms women's overall health, Katrina (a.k.a. the Crescat) rightly points out, "you are not going to die from not having sex." More to the point, contraception was not the issue of the case, as the decision clearly states.

Of the twenty (20!) different forms of "birth control" required under the HHS mandate (which was not passed by the Congress and is not actually part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), Hobby Lobby willingly paid for sixteen (16!) of them.

Here we should pause to ask an important question, which Katrina brilliantly asks:

So I ask – birth control of all things?! I mean of all the drugs out there that people actually need to survive, why something as selective as birth control. No one is going to go into heart failure, kidney failure or diabetic shock without their Yaz. So what the hell, people! I seriously don’t know how anyone can legitimately think free contraception is a dandy idea and a good use of tax payer and government funds. 

I could have asked every single one of my patients what drug they would love to have for free and I can guarantee not a single one of them would’ve said, “Hook me up with some free condoms and pills, please.” Has anyone in our administration ever even met a sick person or someone suffering from a chronic disease and asked them what medications they would like Uncle Sam to foot the bill for?

The government has not yet offered to pay for my arthritis medicine, which I need to move each day. Why? No one will - or, perhaps, can - answer her question.

Back to the case in question. The four forms of contraception to which Hobby Lobby objects (one device and three medicines) do not prevent conception, but instead prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg; this is not contraception but abortion, as even the Obama administration has admitted.

N.B.: The issue before the Supreme Court was not contraception, but abortion and the free exercise of religion (even if the media and liberal politicians maintain otherwise, as only someone who has not read the decision could do).

So the rhetoric of the "war on women" goes on, despite the fact that a majority of the decisions that led to the declaration of the HHS mandate as unconstitutional were given by female judges:

All of this is irritating and frustrating because it is dishonest, immature, and illogical, but more troubling to me are arguments that go along the lines of this meme:

This is another immature and illogical argument, but one far more dangerous because of its lie and deception.

On a friend's Facebook page yesterday, I showed the error of this meme:

So far as I can tell, Islam does not accept abortion as morally licit. At the heart of the Hobby Lobby case was not contraception, but abortifacients. That being the case, inserting "Islam" in place of "Christian" - or even along side it - wouldn't actually change anything.

While it may be true that some Christians would be opposed to the above scenario, I do not think I know any of them. Certainly, the Catholic Church advocates for the free exercise of religion in general and not only of her own, as was clearly stated with the Second Vatican Council's declaration Dignitatis Humanae.

I have never before quoted anything from Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a.k.a., the Mormons), but this quote seems especially apt here:

If it has been demonstrated that I have been willing before Heaven to die for a 'Mormon,' I am bold to declare before Heaven that I am just as ready to die in defending the rights of a Presbytarian [sic], a Baptist, or a good man of any other denomination; for the same principle which would trample upon the rights of the Latter-day Saints would trample upon the rights of the Roman Catholics, or of any other denomination who may be unpopular and too weak to defend themselves.

The issue at hand is the free exercise of religion - of any religion - as protected by the First Amendment. I am unaware of any religion that claims the use of abortifacients on religious grounds.