Excerpt
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The hotly contested — or debated issues of contraception, religious freedom, and the president’s health care law took center stage today at the U.S. Supreme Court.
We start with a look at the people involved in the case.
It comes from Tim O’Brien, who filed this report for the PBS program “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.”
TIM O’BRIEN, Correspondent, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly: The challenge is from the Conestoga Furniture Company in East Earl, Pennsylvania and by Hobby Lobby, a national chain of craft stores with some 28,000 employees.
Both companies are run by devoutly religious families who say requiring them to include certain contraceptives in their health insurance violates their religious convictions. The Obamacare contraception mandate requires companies to provide coverage for 20 government-approved methods of contraception.
The plaintiffs object to only four of them, those they say work like abortifacients, such as the morning-after pill.
STEVE GREEN, President, Hobby Lobby, Inc.: This is an issue of life. We cannot be a part of taking life. And so to be in a situation where our government is telling us that we have to be is incredible.
DAVID GREEN, CEO, Hobby Lobby, Inc.: And there’s no way we’re taking anybody’s rights away. It’s our rights that are being infringed upon to require us to do something that’s against our conscience.
TIM O’BRIEN: In deciding these cases, the Supreme Court will not be writing on a blank slate. Rather, it will be drawing on two of its most controversial decisions in recent memory.
In 1990, the court ruled Native American Indians could be punished for ingesting the hallucinogenic drug peyote, even though it was part of their religious rituals. More important, the court held that laws that apply equally to everyone do not have to make exceptions for religion.
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