Feminist Rhetoric is Hysterical Hyperbole

By William L. Garvin

In war, the first casualty is truth.  In the so called “war on women,” the radical left and extreme feminists have combined to make certain this is true.  Their blatant disregard for the truth and in some cases, absolute ignorance of the facts in the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision is at best, appalling, and at worst, despicable and reprehensible.  Strong, independent women everywhere must be cringing at the hysterical hyperbole and ignorant assertions being made by those currently in the spotlight purporting to be feminist standard bearers.

 For those who choose not to be “informationally-challenged,” a little history is in order.  The Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed in the House by a unanimous voice vote and in the Senate by a vote of 97-3.  It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in November, 1993.  Basically, RFRA prevents the federal government from imposing laws that substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion.

The owners of Hobby Lobby, a closely held corporation, did not want to provide four types of contraceptives that could cause abortions of fertilized eggs.  Their sincerely held religious belief is that life begins at conception.  Fines for not providing these abortifacients under the Affordable Care Act could be as much as $475 million dollars per year.  If they dropped health care entirely, the fines would still be $25 million dollars per year.  The Greens, the principal owners of Hobby Lobby feel a moral compunction to provide their employees with health insurance so the latter was not an option.  They also feel a moral compunction to treat their employees as family and pay their full-time employees a minimum of $14.50 per hour and their part-time employees $9.50 per hour.  Lost to reason in leftist minds is the fact that they have no objection to contraception per se and in fact willingly provide for 16 out of the 20 ACA contraceptives.

Let the contrived “war on women” begin.  While Patricia Ireland, the former president of NOW, was roundly condemning the Hobby Lobby decision, she was asked if she knew how many forms of contraception Hobby Lobby provided.  She had to admit that she didn’t know that basic fact.  Again, it is 16 out of 20.  Amanda Marcotte, feminist writer and leader of the cyber-lynch mob in the Duke lacrosse case, posted that the Supreme Court decision could cost a woman as much as $22,000.  Given that most women can get birth control pills for $9 per month or $108 per year and given a generous 50-year fertility cycle, that would be more like $5,400 unless you have been raised on Common Core math.  Hillary Clinton chimed in with “It’s very troubling that a sales clerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health care plan because her employer doesn’t believe she should use birth control.”  As wrong as videos in Benghazi!

The hopefully soon-to-be-irrelevant yet perpetually clueless Sandra Fluke saw it as a “limit to women’s access to reproductive health care.”  Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted “Can’t believe we live in a world where we’d even consider letting big corps deny women access to basic care based on vague moral objections.”  Upping the ante to her potential challenger, Secretary Clinton then voiced a rather unsettling analogy:  “It is a disturbing trend that you see in a lot of societies that are very unstable, anti-democratic, and frankly prone to extremism where women and women’s bodies are used as the defining and unifying issue…because of their religion, their sect, their tribe, whatever.”  Yes indeed, whatever!  Naturally her acolytes trumpeted her theme:  “the HL decision is like ISIS imposing Sharia law”; “Scalia law is like Sharia law”; and then called for burning down Hobby Lobby stores and raping conservative women who upheld the HL decision.  Whatever, indeed.

Lost on the leftist leaders and their masses was the egregious error in their simplistic notions that the HL decision applied to contraceptive coverage in general and that HL saw all birth control as not appropriate.  Look at their printed slogans:  “Bosses don’t belong in the bedroom.”  “Keep the Board Room out of the Bed Room.”  “My bedroom is not my boss’s business.”  “If I wanted government in my bedroom, I’d (have sex with) a senator.”  Meanwhile, they are totally oblivious to the irony that they are asking the courts to force the government to force their employers to pay for avoiding consequences of their bedroom activities by destroying life.  Where’s Helen Reddy when we need her!