Obamacare Birth Control Free No More? Mandate Already Affected By Hobby Lobby Supreme Court Decision

Will Obamacare birth control be free no longer? It is being claimed that the recent Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision is already having an effect on the Obamacare birth control mandate.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, you can read about the original Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision here, but apparently a lot of people on Twitter confused a SCOTUS blog with the actual SCOTUS opinion by the judges.

As it turns out, the Hobby Lobby decision only affected 4 out of 20 forms of contraception that were listed under the Obamacare birth control mandate. Those four were considered abortive drugs and intrauterine devices (IUDs) that the Christian owners disagreed with on religious grounds. Outside of the four types the owners disagreed with, the company’s insurance policy had been providing the other 16 for years to their employees.

As our report on the subject notes, “nothing in the Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby, Inc. case will prohibit a Hobby Lobby employee from using any form of contraception they want. It only limits whether Hobby Lobby will pay for it through their insurance program.” In addition, Hobby Lobby wages are higher than average so it’s assumed that employees should have enough discretionary income to afford a $10 pill.

But the real question is whether the SCOTUS decision will affect other businesses who oppose the Obamacare mandate to provide free birth control for all 20 types of contraceptives. The judges essentially agreed with Hobby Lobby’s position, saying that the mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which says the government cannot place burdens on the exercise of freedom of religion.

For certain Christian denominations, all forms of birth control are considered to be wrong, and as such, some people worry that business owners will use the SCOTUS decision as justification for not covering this aspect of Obamacare insurance (the decision is only relevant to the contraception mandate, not others like the vaccinations mandate).

Receiving an answer to that question did not take long at all since the Supreme Court ordered that several cases be reconsidered in appeals courts based upon their decision. For example, in Eden Foods v. Burwell, the “Catholic owners of an organic food company in Michigan objected to all forms of preventive services.”

The Sixth Circuit Court had previously rejected the claims of Eden Foods, which said that “participating in, paying for, training others to engage in, or otherwise supporting contraception, abortion, and abortifacients” offended their “deeply held religious beliefs.”

The owner, Michael Potter, had also previously explained the other reasons he opposed the Obamacare birth control mandate:

“I don’t care if the federal government is telling me to buy my employees Jack Daniel’s or birth control. What gives them the right to tell me that I have to do that? That’s my issue, that’s what I object to, and that’s the beginning and end of the story.”

Do you think the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision should be allowed to be applied to all forms of contraception as defined by the Obamacare birth control mandate?