Right-Wing Media’s Fan Fiction On Hobby Lobby And The War On Women
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on July 11th, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
Right-Wing Media’s Fan Fiction On Hobby Lobby And The War On Women
Right-wing media capitalized on the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling with the refrain that the so-called ‘war on women’ is nonexistent, a bizarre take on a decision that relied on conservative talking points to deal a devastating blow to women’s rights and health access.
Last month the Supreme Court ruled that “closely held” for-profit secular corporations like Hobby Lobby are exempt from the so-called contraception mandate, a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires employer-sponsored health insurance to cover comprehensive preventive health care including birth control. Right-wing media cheered the decision — made by a conservative all-male majority relying on right-wing media myths in the opinion — by mocking the notion that it limited women’s access to health care or evidenced a larger war on women.
Bill O’Reilly argued that Hobby Lobby exemplifies how the war on women narrative is being falsely sold by liberals by citing the fact that his two female guests, both Fox News figures, disapprove of “paying for other people’s birth control” and haven’t themselves experienced “gender bigotry.”
Similarly, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum predicted Democrats will use the decision to campaign on the “so-called war on women” with the “message that something’s been taken away” from women. MacCallum deemed the notion “hard to understand” because, according to her, women still “have the freedom to get whatever kind of birth control they want to get,” either from Hobby Lobby’s health coverage or “free from Planned Parenthood.”
Other Fox figures laughed at the idea of Hobby Lobby‘s connection to a war on women by comparing the term to the “Rocky Movie Franchise” which “just sort of keeps on going with different evolutions,” and by describing it as a fabricated Democratic campaign strategy.
The war on women, a term coined by advocacy groups, describes the barrage of attacks from “far-right national and state lawmakers, in coordination with Religious Right activists” on “not just abortion rights, but also access to birth control and preventative care, as well as contemporary views of women’s roles in the workplace, the family and the halls of power,” as People for the American Way explained.