Adam Jones / Global Photo Archive On Monday, the Supreme Court took the position of so many dayanim (a judge in a religious court, but in the Hasidic world, also a man who rules authoritatively on everyday halachic questions) and rabbis across the world in symbolically declining women reproductive autonomy. (I use the word “symbolically”…
(JTA) — Two decades ago the Jewish community united in support of landmark religious freedom legislation. Now the Supreme Court’s application of that law has Jewish groups divided. Leading Jewish advocacy groups denounced the court’s 5-4 decision Monday in the Hobby Lobby case granting religious freedoms protections to companies, while Orthodox groups lauded the ruling….
Getty Images Today’s ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods’ right to deny employees contraception coverage is a disaster both for women and religious minorities. Essentially the decision says that “closely-held” corporations – 90% of American businesses – can choose to exempt employees from contraception coverage, and only contraception coverage. The decision created…
Corporations are people, Mitt Romney famously said at the Iowa State Fair in 2011, and it’s easy now to dismiss the phrase as the awkward, revealing statement of a man so out of tune with the public that he lost an election he was supposed to win. But in March, the U.S. Supreme Court will…
Last week the Supreme Court agreed to hear Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. v. Sebelius and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, two cases about the conflict between Obamacare mandates and religion. Specifically, they examine whether for-profit corporations can refuse to provide employees with certain types of contraception (those that prevent fertilized eggs from implanting), which…
The hallowed principle of religious freedom is centered around protecting the minority from being persecuted by a religious majority, as well as granting all individuals and denominations (including us nonbelievers) the right to freely practice and express beliefs. What it isn’t meant to do, on principle, is allow bosses to subject their employees to their…
State Comptroller Yosef Shapira announced on Sunday he would launch a probe into the allegations that Ethiopian women who sought to immigrate to Israel were administered the long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera with the intent of reducing birthrate within Ethiopian community. The comptroller’s announcement said that “it is possible that some of the women did not understand”…
What is bringing down the birth rates of Israel’s Ethiopian immigrants — culture or chemicals? A new study by the nonpartisan Knesset Research and Information Center found that while Ethiopian Jews traditionally have large families, by 2010 those who arrived in the preceding decade were actually having fewer kids than other Israelis. They were having…
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