|"Hey, Barb, can you hold my sign? They just marked the silk flowers half off..."|
The Supreme Court has decided the Hobby Lobby case, and my Facebook feed is full of earnest (or perhaps very cynical) young (and rapidly approaching menopause) liberal women complaining about a war on woman, an attack on their sexual autonomy, and the coming of a world which previously only existed in Margaret Atwood novels.
So, why can’t the government just force those evil, plutocrat woman-hating Hobby Lobbyists to provide contraception like good upstanding corporate citizens?
Here’s a thought experiment to help you understand the problem.
I am Catholic. I am pro-life. In my younger (stupider, angrier) days, I thought that I could simultaneously be anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. After much study, I discovered that I was wrong, and that the Church asks me to oppose both abortion and the death penalty. So I now oppose the death penalty.
Imagine I opened a chain of craft stores (almost unimaginable, I know, but bear with me here). I try to run my stores in accord with my religious principles. We don’t sell things made by prison labor, we don’t sell products made from inhumanely slaughtered animals, and we don’t donate to or in any way support groups that advocate for the death penalty or abortion.