Posted on 01/07/2014 4:42:57 PM PST by Diago
Et tu, Justice Sonia Sotomayor? Really, we can't trust you on women's health and human rights? The lady from the Bronx just dropped the ball on American women and girls as surely as she did the sparkling ball at midnight on New Year's Eve in Times Square. Or maybe she's just a good Catholic girl.
The Supreme Court is now best understood as the Extreme Court. One big reason why is that six out of nine Justices are Catholic. Let's be forthright about that. (The other three are Jewish.) Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama, is a Catholic who put her religion ahead of her jurisprudence. What a surprise, but that is no small thing.
In a stay order applying to an appeal by a Colorado nunnery, the Little Sisters of the Poor, Justice Sotomayor undermined the new Affordable Care Act's sensible policy on contraception. She blocked the most simple of rules – lenient rules – that required the Little Sisters to affirm their religious beliefs against making contraception available to its members. They objected to filling out a one-page form. What could be easier than nuns claiming they don't believe in contraception?
Sotomayor's blow brings us to confront an uncomfortable reality. More than WASPS, Methodists, Jews, Quakers or Baptists, Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if "you" are female. This is not true of all Catholics – just look at House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. But right now, the climate is so cold when it comes to defending our settled legal ground that Sotomayor's stay is tantamount to selling out the sisterhood. And sisterhood is not as powerful as it used to be, ladies.
Catholics in high places of power have the most trouble, I've noticed, practicing the separation of church and state. The pugnacious Catholic Justice, Antonin Scalia, is the most aggressive offender on the Court, but not the only one. Of course, we can't know for sure what Sotomayor was thinking, but it seems she has joined the ranks of the five Republican Catholic men on the John Roberts Court in showing a clear religious bias when it comes to women's rights and liberties. We can no longer be silent about this. Thomas Jefferson, the principal champion of the separation between state and church, was thinking particularly of pernicious Rome in his writings. He deeply distrusted the narrowness of Vatican hegemony.
The seemingly innocent Little Sisters likely were likely not acting alone in their trouble-making. Their big brothers, the meddlesome American Roman Catholic Archbishops are bound to be involved. They seek and wield tremendous power and influence in the political sphere. Big city mayors know their penchant for control all too well. Their principal target for years on end has been squelching women and girls – even when they should have focused on their own men and boys.
In one stroke with ominous implications, there's no such thing as Catholic justice or mercy for women on the Supreme Court, not even from a woman. The rock of Rome refuses to budge on women's reproductive rights and the Supreme Court is getting good and ready to strike down Roe v. Wade, which became the law of the land 40 years ago. President Clinton had it exactly right in his formulation: abortion should be safe, legal and rare.
Meanwhile, the forces arrayed against women's right to self-determination have been busy taking their campaign to the statehouses. In roughly half of them, women's human rights have been eroded. On the airwaves, the anti-woman conspiracy goes on, with Rush Limbaugh leading the pack of thousands of men. He uses the Obamacare contraception mandate to say, just about every workaday, that young women are just using the government to get sex, or some such thing. He wins the prize for virulently infecting the public dis-coarse.
With friends like Sonia, we don't need opponents like Rush.
In the minds of today’s left, only women who want to murder their children are true “women” sadly.
They do forget that. Now if the government mandated all employees must get pork sandwiches for lunch every week should Muslim business owners be obliged to pay for the pork?
I know not a very good example but I would see an exemption coming for the Muslims.
“artificial contraception”
Artificial contraception is what started this country on the path to Sodom and Gomorrah. Started in the 60s with the femi-nazis who wanted to sleep with every man they could and not get pregnant. Just take this little pill before you hop in the bed and just maybe you won’t get pregnant. No responsibility for your actions whatsoever. Just have a good time. Then the Supreme Court in 1973 said if women had forgotten to take the pill it was OK to just murder the baby she was carrying. Fast forward to a few years ago and the Supreme Court legalized sodomy after being considered deviant sexual perversion since the beginning of time. Now the same sodomites are allowed to get “married” all the country. It all started with “free love” and the pill from the bra burners in the 60s and the United States has been on fast train headed to hell ever since.
I do not understand why any thinking person, regardless of religious belief, would support deductibles and copayments for drugs that treat an illness, surgeries that correct an injury ... but everything at no cost if it's in support of recreational sex.
(Personally, I think much of this is related to Obama's hatred of his mother.)
On the plus side, the Little Sisters of the Poor are getting plenty of publicity. Hopefully this will translate into increased long-term support for their beautiful apostolate.
Robert Schlesinger is managing editor for opinion at U.S. News and World Report, overseeing all opinion editorial content. He is the author of “White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters.” E-mail him at rschlesinger@usnews.com. Follow him on Twitter: @rschles.
Jaime Stiehm on Twitter @gypsyinme
US News & World Report @usnews
David Yontz, Managing Editor at Creators Syndicate syndicates her column: @davidyontz
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