Wireless Contraception 302
Kittenman writes: The BBC is carrying information on a type of contraception (funded in part by Bill Gates) that takes the form of a microchip, inserted under the skin. The chip releases contraceptive hormones to the body until wirelessly advised not to do so. This device has several interesting applications and issues associated with it. The researchers are already working on making the device secure against unauthorized transmissions. There's also the issue of making it easier for governments to control population levels. The chip will be available from 2018. This correspondent will watch the issues with interest.
Re:Hormones screw up women's bodies to much. (Score:5, Insightful)
What "they" need to develop is a chip that releases "sperm poison".
Or, you know, a sex education program that's not absolutely retarded.
This is, of course, assuming the end goal is limiting unwanted pregnancies.
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, aside from trying to make Aldous Huxley's fantasy a reality, what's the friggin' point?
Re:yes but (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yes but...yes in fact. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yes but (Score:2, Insightful)
The Hobby Lobby case was about a corporation demanding religious freedom to reject paying for the medical care of their employees based on the religious view of the company owners.
It's a terrible decision, as it means that somehow not only are corporations 'persons', but they have the religious freedom to impose their will on their employees.
The Hobby Lobby case is/was about individual owners of a company not losing their rights just because they formed a corporation for tax or liability purposes. It treats these individuals just like they were still a sole proprietorship or partnership. Simply put, the decision says that if you form a business, you do not give up any rights regardless of the form of that business.
This immediately led to companies saying they also want to claim the right to not hire LGBT people, against Federal laws, because they say so.
That is really surprising. Do you have a citation to support that? I ask, because individuals before the Hobby Lobby case did not have a right to not hire LGBT, so the Hobby Lobby case has zero impact on the LGBT community. If something was discriminatory prior to Hobby Lobby for an individual to do, then it is still discriminatory post Hobby Lobby. Nothing has changed in that regard.
Sorry, this isn't 'hyper reactionary', this isn't 'liberal propaganda', this is entirely about the right of religious people to be able to discriminate based on their beliefs -- and somehow expecting it to remain illegal to discriminate against them.
If you think this is such a good ruling, wait until a Muslim business starts saying they don't want to follow laws which violate Sharia law, or that women are required to wear veils if they work for them,
No, this is about asshole Republicans and religious people deciding they should be exempt from the laws of civil society and be able to opt out.
It's you who has no idea of what that case was about.
Again, the Hobby Lobby case had nothing to do with what you post. It was about not losing one's individual rights because of the way a business is organized. Of the 1,200 approved contraceptives on the market in the US, Hobby Lobby provides for 1,196 of them. How is that discrimination? To win it's case, over those four contraceptives, the government had to show there was no other reasonable way to provide them short of violating the owner's religious rights. That was not the case and the court said so. The Hobby Lobby case did not bestow religious freedoms on corporations. It did, however, keep the owners of those corporations, if fewer than five individuals from losing their religious freedoms.
Re:yes but (Score:2, Insightful)
Me not paying for your stuff is not the same as me keeping you from having it. Everyone knows how HL feels about this now. Seems simple, don't work there if you don't agree.
Re:yes but...yes in fact. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Supreme Court majority can't even get their excuses for the Hobby Lobby verdict right. When the verdict came out, they said it was a limited verdict on just those forms of birth control and the form declaring the institution a religious institution was a good workaround. The next day, they said the verdict applies to all forms of birth control. (Apparently, the company just needs to "religiously believe" that something is wrong and they don't need to cover it in their health care plans.) The next day, they made a preliminary ruling in another case that said that the form declaring that an institution has religious issues with something wasn't good. The very form they pointed to 2 days earlier as a good thing. Now, merely requiring an institution to declare "we are religiously offended by X" is offensive.
Of course, Hobby Lobby apparently has no problem covering Viagra regardless of the marital state of their male employees.
I'd boycott Hobby Lobby, but we never shop there anyway as we've known about - and had issues with - the owners making personal religious beliefs into company policy for years. We much prefer Michael's or JoAnn's.
Re:yes but (Score:4, Insightful)
Yea, it's a weird situation, but we have already make people pay for things they don't want. A real big one is war, you are required to pay taxes to support a war. It's irrelevant that you may or may not approve of it, or that you might be against killing people, even if that's your religious belief. You are required to pay for the food for the soldiers, which may involve killing sacred animals. You are also required to pay for courts, that may preside over divorce cases.
That's the real issue, the government can and does make you pay for things you disagree with, and you don't have a say in it (other than your vote). So why can't the government make you pay for health care that you don't agree with? If the receiver disagrees with it, that's usually when your choice comes into play. But we found that doesn't really matter either, for example in a draft. Being against the war doesn't exempt you from being required to kill someone.
Re:yes but (Score:4, Insightful)
Then please tell me: how does this decision not apply to any other "sincerely held religious belief of a closely held corporation"? The SCOTUS might say that the decision is only supposed to apply to these particular scenarios, but I can't see how you can distinguish one sincerely held religious belief from another. Unless, of course, you let the government get into the business of deciding which religious beliefs trump which.
Then again, this is already happening, thanks to some enlightened congress critters wanting to legislate Baptist beliefs into government law.