Tuesday, July 22, 2014

There’s a Storm Coming…

It would be comforting to describe today’s story as merely asinine; the actions of a deranged or possibly diseased mind, or perhaps those of a gibbering idiot. Then we could file it under the “Stupid” tag and forget all about it – after a reasonable pause for laughter, if desired. Unfortunately, I don’t believe this is the case; it smacks of the kind of fanaticism posing as business and greed posing as faith that we’ve seen so much of lately, and the business implications alone are appalling. In Tampa, Florida, there’s a nurse-midwife who is suing a family planning center because they declined to hire her after she told them she refused to prescribe birth control pills…

I found the story on Slate, who got it from a couple of other bloggers, but they’re linking to the agencies actually involved in the lawsuit, which seems like adequate confirmation. Apparently a woman named Sara Hellwege, a nurse-midwife, applied for a job at the Tampa Family Health Centers, during which process she listed membership in an anti-contraception group on her resume. When asked about this, Hellwege admitted that she would refuse to prescribe birth control pills to anyone. The Centers told her that this was an important part of the job, and they needed someone who would be willing to complete those duties. As a result, Hellwege and her right-wing backers are now suing the health centers, claiming that this represents religious discrimination…

It would be tedious, at best, to explain all of the ways in which this is wrong, but we can probably start with the actual laws. The health center did not ask Ms. Hellwege what religion she practices, and then refuse to hire her on that basis; they asked her if she would be willing to perform the duties assigned to the position for which they were hiring. Membership in a secular organization (the anti-contraception group in question has no religious affiliation) does not indicate any particular personal belief, but even if it did the health center didn’t ask Ms. Hellwege if she belonged to such a group, she told them. Moreover, even then the health center did not decline to hire her because she belonged to a group of far-right wing nuts; they declined to hire her because she refused to do the job…

It’s also worth noting that this case makes no sense as an Equal Opportunity Employment complaint under Title VII, because the same law makes exceptions for cases where making accommodations would cause the employer “undue hardship” – which, I think we can agree, forcing a family planning center to hire anyone who will prevent clients from planning their families definitely would. One has to wonder how any reasonable person would have applied for a job they would be unwilling to do in the first place; it sounds completely insane. Unless the whole point of the exercise was always the lawsuit, and not the job…

The clue here is that both Ms. Hellwege and her anti-conception backers keep throwing the word “abortion” around, both in their communications and in the court documents. Birth control pills have nothing to do with abortion; they are part of the class of contraceptives called “non-barrier methods,” and prevent someone from becoming pregnant in the first place. But it’s hard to get people worked up about contraception, either in the legislature or the courts, while abortion is still an emotional issue for much of the country…

As I mentioned at the top of this post, the business implications are appalling. Imagine a world in which anyone who wants to can apply for a job with your company and then demand that you hire them and let them tell you and your clients how to live their lives or else they will sue you for millions. No matter what your position on birth control or abortion might be, there’s no way to cast this as anything other than a sleazy attempt to use a law intended to protect religious freedom in the workplace to push a political agenda onto everyone else. Let’s just hope this gets slapped down by the court before it takes out whatever is left of Business in America…

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