U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg cut to the heart of it:
"In a decision of startling breadth, the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they {the corporations} judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
Several new Supreme Court decisions demonstrate the speed, breadth and growth of the new fascism in America. Just a couple of months back, the Court ruled in favor of unlimited campaign finance contributions, uncapping the amount that corporations can dump into elections.
This summer, the fascist war on women's bodies has grown to a new height with the Court's one-two punch granting companies the freedom to deny health care coverage for contraception. First the Supreme Court ruled that the "corporate body" views on religion can be more sacred than a woman's right to control her own body! Then the court expanded that ruling to let companies challenge any contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
This has almost nothing to do with religious rights and everything to do with expanding corporate rights. They can name anything under the sun and call it a religious belief. Justice Ginsberg wrote in her scathing dissent, “Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah's Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations…Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today's decision."
These decisions make it easier for corporation to give religious arguments in their quest for more wealth, more power, and domination of politics and the economy. They reinforce the draconian, fascist drive to make the state, including the government, law enforcement and the military - do what the corporations want, rather than what the people want.
This underscores the importance of human rights battles going forward in the absence of economic rights for workers, women, the poor, and We the People. The need for a cooperative society that is not ruled by the needs of corporations. We need a society that can advance and protect the needs of individuals and bring economic security to us all. We the people must take over and govern public resources in the interests not of the narrow few, but for the good of all. We women with our education, our organizing and our direct actions will step up to first liberate and then nationalize the resources we need so that we might THRIVE and not merely survive. A war on women is a war on all.
How can this happen to us? Who’s America is it anyway? It is certainly not an America for women or for the poor or the masses. These decisions represent a larger trend sweeping the nation where corporations are gaining more and more power over politics on all levels, from local to national. What we are witnessing is a slow and steady reorganization of the state to protect private property laws to support phenomenal wealth accumulation by the 0.01%. By sacrificing women’s bodies to corporate whims, the Supreme Court is siding with profits over people. To have a different America we will build a broad transformative movement to secure the economic justice and security we need.
~ Ethel Long-Scott serves as co-Chair on the Commission on Women's Power on the Democracy Branch of the Green Shadow Cabinet.
"In a decision of startling breadth, the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they {the corporations} judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
Several new Supreme Court decisions demonstrate the speed, breadth and growth of the new fascism in America. Just a couple of months back, the Court ruled in favor of unlimited campaign finance contributions, uncapping the amount that corporations can dump into elections.
This summer, the fascist war on women's bodies has grown to a new height with the Court's one-two punch granting companies the freedom to deny health care coverage for contraception. First the Supreme Court ruled that the "corporate body" views on religion can be more sacred than a woman's right to control her own body! Then the court expanded that ruling to let companies challenge any contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
This has almost nothing to do with religious rights and everything to do with expanding corporate rights. They can name anything under the sun and call it a religious belief. Justice Ginsberg wrote in her scathing dissent, “Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah's Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations…Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today's decision."
These decisions make it easier for corporation to give religious arguments in their quest for more wealth, more power, and domination of politics and the economy. They reinforce the draconian, fascist drive to make the state, including the government, law enforcement and the military - do what the corporations want, rather than what the people want.
This underscores the importance of human rights battles going forward in the absence of economic rights for workers, women, the poor, and We the People. The need for a cooperative society that is not ruled by the needs of corporations. We need a society that can advance and protect the needs of individuals and bring economic security to us all. We the people must take over and govern public resources in the interests not of the narrow few, but for the good of all. We women with our education, our organizing and our direct actions will step up to first liberate and then nationalize the resources we need so that we might THRIVE and not merely survive. A war on women is a war on all.
How can this happen to us? Who’s America is it anyway? It is certainly not an America for women or for the poor or the masses. These decisions represent a larger trend sweeping the nation where corporations are gaining more and more power over politics on all levels, from local to national. What we are witnessing is a slow and steady reorganization of the state to protect private property laws to support phenomenal wealth accumulation by the 0.01%. By sacrificing women’s bodies to corporate whims, the Supreme Court is siding with profits over people. To have a different America we will build a broad transformative movement to secure the economic justice and security we need.
~ Ethel Long-Scott serves as co-Chair on the Commission on Women's Power on the Democracy Branch of the Green Shadow Cabinet.
