Opinion Pieces Address Potential Global Impact Of Supreme Court’s Ruling In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby

The following opinion pieces address how the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that ‘closely held corporations cannot be required to provide contraception coverage for their employees’ might affect women’s right to contraception worldwide and policies surrounding religious objections to other health interventions.

Forbes: Could Hobby Lobby Affect Women Around The World?
Anushay Hossain, contributor

“…If women’s health and rights are being rolled back in America, it is just a matter of time before the ripple effects are felt around the world. Worse, rulings like this could make [their] way into programs the U.S. implements abroad. In a nutshell, bad news for American women is bad news for all women. How can the U.S. be considered a beacon for democracy, or even pretend to be, when women are still fighting for contraceptives in 2014? What is the difference between the five men who voted in favor of denying women contraception coverage, and the mullahs in the villages of Bangladesh who refuse women the same right?…” (7/1).

New Yorker: When the Taliban Meets Hobby Lobby
Steve Coll, staff writer and dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University

“…If the Pakistani Taliban, aided by clever lawyers, organized a closely held American corporation, and professed to run it on religious principles, might its employees be deprived of insurance coverage to inoculate their children against polio? … [T]he impact on children, living and unborn, of the Taliban public policy on vaccines is not, arguably, different in category from the impact that the Hobby Lobby decision will likely have on the families of those who work at companies whose owners claim to run them on Christian principles, in one respect: the extrapolation of religious beliefs into public policy will damage the over-all health of affected families…” (7/2).

The KFF Daily Global Health Policy Report summarized news and information on global health policy from hundreds of sources, from May 2009 through December 2020. All summaries are archived and available via search.

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