This week President Barack Obama's Affordable
Care Act faces a major constitutional challenge from a series of hearings in the Supreme Court. Yet the national judicial branch is not the only political element contesting the health reform law. The legislative body of Arizona is considering
a bill which gives state employers
the right to deny contraceptive coverage to their female employees. The bill
directly attacks a provision in the Affordable Care Act which requires insurance companies to cover the contraceptive
costs for all female employees, including those who work for religious
affiliated companies. Arizona's pending bill, HB 2625, is
supported by regional interest groups, who have recognized that their
beliefs were not upheld in the Affordable Care Act. The Center for Arizona
Policy, a nonprofit organization representing several evangelical churches in
Arizona, promotes HB 2625 for protecting “religious liberties of
employers" as its legal counsel, Deborah Sheasby, states. The organization's
plea for religious freedom resonates with the Arizona Catholic Conference, a
group of bishops who support the bill and attempted to veto the state’s Contraceptive
Equity Law, which has required all employers to cover the costs of
contraceptives since 2002. Other interest
groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood
Arizona, oppose the bill for their own central beliefs. The American Civil
Liberties Union argues that the bill enables employers to discriminate against female
employees who choose to use contraception. The President of Planned Parenthood,
Bryan Howard, disagrees with the unequal access to medication based on gender. Unfortunately
for these liberal organizations, the majority of Republicans, the leading party
in the state which favors lack of government control, supports the bill.
Currently, HB 2625 has passed in Arizona’s House of Representatives and Senate
Judiciary Committee; yet it still needs to be approved by the entire Senate and
the governor.
The progress that the bill has made in Arizona’s legislative branch reveals that the efforts of Catholic organizations have swayed the state representatives. But the individuals most affected by the bill, female employees, have yet to voice a collaborative, strong voice against the issue. The choice to use contraceptives will influence and possibly limit where female employees choose to work. Since several organizations plea for their own self-interests, they threaten the voices of those who are truly affected by the bill. Such action incites a fear that James Madison, a framer of the Constitution, voiced in the Federalist Papers #10: a government dominated by the interests of factions, or interest groups, which ignore the will of the people.
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