Quick Note: SCOTUS and the 2016 Presidential Election

Talking with my husband yesterday, I said that the Hobby Lobby decision is a result of the virulent thread of misogyny being spread by today's Republican Party and that the Supreme Court had allowed their decision to be swayed by politics instead of based on law.  

I also said that I hoped this would be the spark that lit the fire under Democratic voters and those who are sick of conservative self-righteousness and would get them to the polls this November.  If we don't say "No!" now, how bad will things be for the women of this country in 2016?

It seems that someone else was thinking the same thing. 

James Easley of PoliticusUSA reported on Hillary Clinton's response to the Hobby Lobby case in which she called it a strike against human rights, explaining: "You know part of the reason I was so adamant about including women and girls in our foreign policy, not as a luxury, but as a central issue is because they're often the canaries in the mine.  You watch women and girls being deprived of their rights."

And now it's not Africa or the Middle East, but the rights of women in this country that are being systematically stripped by a conservative movement run amok.

Ms. Clinton also pointed out Justice Kennedy's suggestion that the government step in and simply provide free contraception for all women.  She wonders whether he is saying he would prefer a single payer health care system in which the government had the final say on what was and was not provided, thus eliminating the possibility of cases like the one brought by Hobby Lobby.  

And I question why--if he believes free, government provided contraception should be readily available to all women--he would side with Hobby Lobby's desire to make it unavailable to some. He can't have it both ways.  Either the government can provide birth control to every woman or it can't.

Mr. Easley concludes his article this way:
"Out of all the responses to the decision, Mrs. Clinton's put what the conservative majority on the Supreme Court did perfectly into context.  This is not the behavior of a forward moving society.  This was an anti-democratic ruling that represented the extremism of the conservative movement in this country.

It is too soon to tell, but someday historians may point to the Hobby Lobby decision as one of the key moments that got Hillary Clinton elected president.  Women may be motivated and ready to deliver the final blow to the conservative misogynists by electing Hillary Clinton president in 2016."

From your mouth to God's ear.