Arizona Tea-Publican legislature one step closer to reducing women to second-class citizens

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Arizona Tea-Publican legislature is one step closer to reducing women to second-class citizens who are property of the state by stripping women of their Constitutional rights and liberties in Arizona. Birth-control-exclusion bill goes to AZ Senate:

A Senate panel voted Monday to let employers with religious or moral objections refuse to include contraceptive coverage in their health insurance plans for their workers.

HB 2625 would repeal a decade-old mandate that says companies that provide coverage must also include contraceptives. Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, said the move is necessary to protect freedom.

The measure already has been approved by the House, meaning it needs only approval by the full Senate before going to the governor.

"I believe that we live in America. We don't live in the Soviet Union," Lesko said. "And so government shouldn't be telling employers, Catholic organizations or mom-and-pop employers to do something that's against their moral beliefs."

Wow. This Lesko is seriously whack. She has a different definition of "freedom" than everyone else. And the Soviet Union? Please. This is the most authoritarian piece of legislation yet from the Tea-Publicans.

What Lesko is really saying is that Constitutional rights and liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are not shared by all Americans equally, but are ranked according to classes of individuals, including the legal fiction of corporations ("corporations are people too, my friend"), who enjoy a preferential legal status over lower-ranked classes of individuals.

This is the only possible explanation for why employers (including corporations, many of them multi-nationals) and insurance companies should enjoy a preferential legal status to make health care decisions for American women, rather than American women enjoy the individual "freedom" to make health care decisions for themselves in consulation with their physician:

Class 1

Corporations, Partnerships, Nonprofit Organizations, Trusts, Sole Proprietorships

Class 2

Males (preferably White)

Class 3

Fertilized human eggs, zygotes, fetuses

Class 4

Females*

* Constitutional rights and liberties subject to and limited by the preferential status granted by the state of Arizona to higher ranked classes. Voidable upon the occurrence of pregnancy.

This is government intervention in health care on the most personal and intimate level imaginable. It also violates medical privacy laws, including the HIPAA Privacy Rule for medical records, that no man is subjected to (an equal protection violation):

Anjali Abraham, lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union, told lawmakers . . . there is a more practical concern.

HB 2625 has an exception requiring employers to provide coverage for contraceptives if they are prescribed for some purpose other than preventing pregnancy. For example, Abraham said, a woman with endometriosis, in which cells from the lining of the womb grow in other areas of the body. It can be treated with hormones, including contraceptives.

The problem, Abraham said, is women who want payment for those contraceptives can be required to first pay for the prescription and then submit a claim to the company "along with evidence that the prescription is not in whole or in part" to prevent pregnancy.

"She would have to reveal her underlying medical condition," Abraham said, information that is supposed to be private, and is private under the current system.

And even if the contraceptives remain covered, the legislation allows the business to charge an administrative fee for handling the claims.

Tea-Publicans have falsely characterized this as a freedom of religion issue. Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion. One religious faith does not get to impose its religious dogma on all other persons of other religious faiths, or no religious faith, by force of law. That is what the First Amendment guarantees.

Constitutional rights and liberties are enjoyed by individual American citizens equally — they are not subject to ranking by preferential status or voidable upon the occurrence of pregnancy in women.