NATIONAL – The women of AF3IRM stand in absolute dissent and disgust at Monday’s Supreme Court ruling that favors the bigotry of corporations over the rights of women. The Burwell v. Hobby Lobby majority decision, led by five Christian, conservative male judges, places an extra burden on women to be able to freely make decisions about their reproductive health. By effectively enabling one’s workplace to restrict personal health choices, it now makes it  economically more difficult for women to exercise options guaranteed under the Affordable Care Act. This will especially negatively impact lower-income women and women of color, who cannot easily afford the cost of contraceptives without their insurance. Women comprise more than two-thirds of the low-income and minimum-wage workforce and with this decision, certain contraceptives are placed out of their reach.

AF3IRM denounces this Supreme Court decision as a vicious attack against women and as an outright denial of reproductive justice. Even more galling is the expressed narrowness of the decision because it specifically targets only women and our bodies. Corporate owners’ religious beliefs and faulty understanding of the human body and sexual reproduction can apparently now take precedent over a women’s right to choose.

This is a slippery slope – to believe that the few drugs named in the case are the only things that companies and the religious right will try to take away from women is naïve and foolish. We have recently seen the loss of buffer zones around abortion clinics – allowing for increased harassment, intimidation and violence against women who choose to exercise their rights. The right to even  have an abortion in constantly under attack and  we already know that states have forced sterilization on women in prisons. These are NOT isolated incidents or policies. These are calculated tactics that work to control our bodies, our lives and our communities and to undermine the hard-fought rights of women.

Time and time again, we women have had to defend our rights and our bodies against systemic oppression. How often must we remind people that our bodies belong to us? Women’s bodies are not the property of any religion. Women’s bodies are not the property of any state or country. Women’s bodies are not the property of any corporation. Women’s bodies and our reproductive choices belong to us women and to us alone!

The audacity in the majority’s decision in this case and their clear disregard for women’s rights is appalling. This is a move away from reproductive justice, away from protecting women’s rights, and away from women’s liberation. It is an outright attack on women’s ability and right to control the most personal of spaces – our own bodies. A woman should be able to make her own reproductive choices. The company for which she works has no business dictating that.

Corporations continue to be allowed to manipulate the system and to bypass laws meant to safeguard the rights of the people. For our judicial system to privilege the opinions of those few who have the means to own a corporation over the beliefs and rights of hundreds and thousands who provide the labor that keep the same company running is simply wrong. This is a dangerous precedent that can be used to further restrict the lives and choices of women, while disturbingly extending extra freedoms and powers to for-profit entities and corporations.

As much as we in AF3IRM are dismayed and troubled by this decision, we are not deterred in our struggle. The women of AF3IRM and our allies will continue to demand reproductive justice for all women and to fight against the corporate and religious extremists who try to lay claim to our bodies. Women are rising against these attacks – each time they try to push us back, we push forward.

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