Hobby Lobby

We don't have much to add to the hyperbolic cacophony of punditry that was released by the SCOTUS's Holly Lobby decision yesterday, but simply want to point out the following to keep our left-wing friends grounded to reality: 1) This decision leaves completely untouched the long-settled rule, first set forth in Griswold v. Connecticut, that the state cannot interfere with an adult's right to use birth control. Whatever the Chicken Littles at Mother Jones, the Nation, or the NYT try to say, nobody took away anyone's access to birth control. Rather, this decision deals with the very narrow issue of the State not being able to force a third party to pay for birth control against that party's sincerely held religious beliefs. (And although the grounds for the holding were statutory, we thought we heard something somewhere about religious liberty having some sort of constitutional protection in our jurisprudence? Oh yeah, it was here.); 2) This decision returns us not the Dark Ages or even to the 1960s, but the the status quo of 2012; 3) The average cost of most forms of birth control is between $15 and $50 per month, meaning that the issue here really is religious conviction, not cost or even access. Moreover, most employers will continue to cover this anyway, because a) most employees want it and b) it is far cheaper than pregnancy. This mandate was only ever really about forcing conformity, not about a legitimate public health need (and if there is a legitimate public health need, there are other ways for government to meet that need); and 4) This should be the ultimate fusionist issue, uniting libertairans and conservatives in common cause, unlike Griswold from a generation ago, which put libertarians in the liberal's camp.