Why Hobby Lobby is still a disaster, in one short infographic

It's not hard to take away low-income workers' health coverage. Here's how hard it is for them to get it back

Published August 28, 2014 2:08PM (EDT)

                           (flickr/Nicholas Eckhart)
(flickr/Nicholas Eckhart)

The Obama administration gets it. Ruth Bader Ginsburg gets it. Even the satanists get it. The Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision is an ongoing disaster that damages real women's lives, and there is nothing limited about it. One of the basic misunderstandings apparent in the case is that birth control is something low-income workers can simply afford to pay for out-of-pocket when their employers deny them coverage. They can't. But no matter how many times people type or shout or scribble that fact on protest signs, it's still not as clear as a picture.

So here is a picture, courtesy of the This Is Personal campaign:

As the infographic shows, it can take days, weeks or months of work for low-income employees to be able to pay for necessary contraceptive care. These workers do not pay for their birth control with Monopoly money or spare change -- there is no spare change. Allowing corporations to deny certain health coverage on their terms allows them to deny their workers the opportunity to even try to make ends meet. It's an untenable threat to real women's lives.


By Jenny Kutner

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