Religious Freedom of Corporations

Birth Control Ethics

The author of this report has been asked to consider the ethical dilemma of whether businesses and organizations should be required as a matter law to offer certain birth control options as part of the health insurance offerings given by the organization. For many publicly traded and diverse organizations, there is not really a question involved and compliance is pretty automatic. However, organizations that are privately held and/or religiously oriented tend to be an entirely different matter. Such has been the case with Hobby Lobby and Wheaton College. The former went to court to demand that they not be required to offer certain contraception options and they won. The latter decided to drop offering insurance altogether because of the ethical and legal implications involved in doing so. While birth control may be seen as a right for all women, there are many people that do not see things that way and the Supreme Court has been among those people at certain times.

Analysis

While it may be vexing to some why some organizations ban or limit the use of contraception on ethical or religious grounds given the obvious benefits and need to engage in family planning given the implications of having a child that is unplanned and/or cannot be supported given the relationship and monetary dynamics that exist. Beyond that, there is the feeling that people should have the right to manage their family planning as they see fit regardless of the justifications and that allowing employers to have an impact on that is not fair or equitable. Of the two example cases mentioned in this assignment, the Hobby Lobby case in particular is one that should get a lot of the focus. Wheaton could be a main focus but they took the proverbial easy way out and decided to no offer health insurance at all, at least for students (Pashman, 2015).

One thing that firms like Hobby Lobby have on their side is the fact there is indeed the free practice of religion guaranteed in the Constitution. At the same time, family planning and the idea of foisting one's viewpoints on the employees of a firm is often seen as unethical. There is a point to this but when a firm is privately held (which Hobby Lobby is), there is the question of whether the employee has the right to demand or expect such accommodations. Indeed, one might want to wonder why a person that seeks birth control covered across the board as part of health insurance trying to work at an organization that is Catholic or otherwise against the use of such materials. Indeed, many people classify sexual activity as a "need" but that is really not reasonable in the grand scheme of things. Most (but not all) birth control is rather cheap even without insurance and condoms are also reasonably priced. At the same time, there are reasons why birth control is taken that have nothing to do with sex such as regulating the menstrual cycle and so forth. At the end of the day, the author of this report would assert that firms like Hobby Lobby should have the right to make the choices that they are making without persecution or over-regulation from the government. It should only apply to firms that are privately held and/or religious in nature. Publicly traded firms should be required to comply with ObamaCare as written, even if it is with very mixed results (Morton, 2016)

Even if there are doomsday-esque people that suggest that people cannot pick and choose their employer, that is not really true. Even when job markets are tight, people can find a job from a firm whose practices and values align with their own. Requiring a private firm to follow a standard they are not comfortable following is generally (but not always) unacceptable. One could make the case that offering services in an equal fashion to LGBT people is an example of using religious freedom to justify bigotry. However, there is no right to birth control in the Constitution. Even so, the passage of laws that do not conflict with the Constitution are allowed for. However, privately held firms that are not held to SEC or other regulation should be exempt from those sorts of standards if it is clear that it is a religious value matter and there is no condoning of bigotry or unsafe behavior. At the end of the day, people that cannot afford birth control should probably not be having sex (ACLU, 2016).