4 Basic Facts to Remember Before the Supreme Court Hears a Major Case About Birth Control
Later this month, the highest court in the United States will hear two religious challenges to Obamacare’s contraceptive coverage requirement. The owners of two for-profit companies, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties, are arguing that they should be exempt from providing this type of coverage to their female employees because they have religious objections to birth control.
The Supreme Court is taking up the highly-anticipated case on March 25, and the dispute largely centers on a few basic facts about birth control that Obamacare opponents are misrepresenting. Here’s what you should keep in mind as this debate heats up over the next several weeks:
1. Emergency contraception is not the same thing as abortion.
At the heart of the religious objection to contraceptive coverage is the incorrect assertion that Obamacare covers “abortion-inducing drugs.” Abortion opponents believe that life begins at fertilization, and claim that some types of birth control — specifically, the “morning after pill,” or emergency contraception — work by destroying a fertilized egg. But major medical groups actually define life as beginning at implantation, when a fertilized egg attaches to the uterine lining. This is the legal definition of pregnancy that has been accepted for decades. Scientists agree that contraceptive methods prevent pregnancy by interfering with ovulation, fertilization, or implantation.
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