Cranford, NJ — On Wednesday, U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Mark Udall (D-CO) introduced the “Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act of 2014,” legislation that will restore certain types of contraceptive insurance coverage for women following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling on June 30. American Atheists fully supports this bill and advocates for fast-tracking its immediate passage.
“If you’re religious, I don’t care that someone else’s personal medical decisions are against your religious beliefs. That’s like being mad at someone else for eating a donut because you’re on a diet,” said American Atheists President David Silverman. “If you think your god prohibits certain types of birth control, then don’t use them, but access to health services guaranteed under the law is an employee’s right, and it’s a right American Atheists defends, and a right for which we will fight.”
“Choosing the right form of reproductive health care is between an individual and her doctor,” Silverman said. “This is about fundamentalists abusing our secular legal system to force their personal religious values onto other people, people who do not share their beliefs, and that is exactly what our country’s founders sought to preclude when they laid out what it means to have religious freedom.”
The basis for the Supreme Court’s ruling was a 1993 law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which was intended to prevent the government from interfering with the practice of an individual’s religious beliefs. Hobby Lobby persuaded a majority of the Supreme Court that a closely held corporation can legally hold religious beliefs and deny providing insurance coverage of all 20 forms of birth control specified in the Affordable Care Act.
The press release for the Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act of 2014 can be found here: http://www.murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/newsreleases?ContentRecord_id=25277c4f-00ee-45af-aded-3d03b5fec6a9
A summary of the bill can be found here: http://www.murray.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/30554052-0f84-485a-babc-ccc04af85bb6/protect-women-s-health-from-corporate-interference-act—one-page-summary—final.pdf
