It is safe to assume that most modern-day feminists never played organized sports as children — or at least they never got the “Don’t be a sore loser” speech from their parents. If the Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. tells us anything about the feminist Left, it’s that they are definitely sore losers.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in favor of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties. Justice Samuel Alito penned the majority opinion, which held that closely held for-profit corporations, where there is “no essential difference between the businesses and its owners,” like Hobby Lobby, are persons under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and can therefore object to parts of the Department of Health and Human Services mandate that they believe infringe on their religious freedom. The contraceptives in question? Not “the pill,” as some headlines would have you believe, but the emergency contraceptives Plan B and Ella and two kinds of IUDs.
Of course, telling a feminist that she cannot abort a pregnancy under every possible circumstance is like telling a cat to get in the bathtub. Shortly after the announcement of the high court’s decision, Jezebel posted a brief article entitled “SCOTUS Rules Beliefs of Your Boss Trump Your Access to Contraceptives.” Other feminist publications posted articles with similar titles. Ms. magazine’s newsbrief on the subject was headlined “BREAKING: SCOTUS Decides Corporations Have Religious Liberty, Women Do Not in Choosing Birth Control.” You would think that every woman’s daily birth-control pills had vanished from their medicine cabinets with the bang of the gavel.
Feminists also cannot seem to comprehend the complexity of the following sentence, which was essential to the opinion held by the Court: “Protecting the free-exercise rights of closely held corporations . . . protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control them.” Case in point: A longer, more hilarious article on Jezebel entitled “Women Aren’t People (But Corporations Are),” in which the author claims that the SCOTUS decision declared women “Unpeople,” later asks a question so profound it would put Friedrich Nietzsche to shame: “If corporations are people then why can’t I punch one in the f****** face?” The writer, Erin Gloria Ryan, then goes on to claim that the ruling applies to
a small group of people who think birth control is black magic. This ruling applies to whore pills only. Not to blood transfusions, AIDS retrovirals, vaccines, treating infections caused by getting a SATAN RULES tattoo with an infected needle at an unsafe tattoo parlor, antibiotics purchased to fight off a nasty case of the clap caught while raw dogging a stranger in a bar bathroom. Just birth control. No matter why a woman needs it.
See? This is why feminists can’t have nice things. Besides bullying Satanists and insulting women based on their sexual habits (I bet if that woman in the bar bathroom got pregnant from that encounter, Ms. Ryan would support her right to an abortion, regardless of whether the baby was conceived by “raw dogging” or not), this sentence points out another untruth the feminists are presenting as truth.
The phrase “No matter why a woman needs it” implies that a woman may want birth control for reasons other than avoiding pregnancy, and indeed, it is well known that many women take birth-control pills to regulate menstruation or for severe cramps or for a plethora of other health reasons. But women don’t take Plan B, which is the type of contraceptive addressed in the SCOTUS ruling, for anything other than ending an unwanted pregnancy. Ms., at the end of its newsbrief about the decision, listed “Highlights you should know.” The first two read as follows:
‐ Studies have shown that the pill reduces the incidence of ovarian and endometrial cancers
That’s nice, but neither of those apply to the Hobby Lobby case. The pill was not in question. In fact, Hobby Lobby did not have issue with providing coverage for the pill. The company’s owners took issue with Plan B, which does not “treat painful conditions” or “reduce incidence of . . . cancers.” The Supreme Court justices do not want women to die of cancer.
In what is probably one of the saddest displays of feminist sore-loserdom, Hypervocal.com shortly after the announcement of the court decision posted an article that discussed “Life Hacks,” in which feminists angry about the ruling can create feminist art from Hobby Lobby products. The author, Neda Sumnani, writes, “To those women who work at Hobby Lobby and are super angry about their reproductive rights being usurped for the corporation’s religious rights, get out your glue guns and your employee discount card, because it is time to angry craft something.” She then details crafts one can present to their “corporate overlords” at the arts-and-crafts store, such as a crocheted uterus. No, I am not kidding.
To return to Ms. Ryan: She ends her diatribe by feigning befuddlement as to how the Hobby Lobby ruling could not be called discrimination against women. She asks, “Who would have guessed five schlubby law nerds would be capable of such a stunning display of mental gymnastics?” And here, we have modern feminism in a nutshell: insulting people who disagree with you. Calling justices of the nation’s highest court “schlubby law nerds?” The kids in third grade who called me “butt-chin” because I have a dimple were more original than that. And they weren’t paid writers.
— Christine Sisto is an editorial associate at National Review Online.