It was learned this week that Hobby Lobby -- the Christian-owned retailer
whose deeply held religious opposition to birth control and abortion compelled
it to take its challenge of The Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) all the way to
The U.S. Supreme Court -- has been, for years, profiting from investments they have made in companies that manufacture those same products which the
owners of Hobby Lobby so vehemently oppose.
So, does that mean it's only bad when you're not making money from it?
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From The Washington Post:
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By Gail Sullivan
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April 2 at 3:30 am
“Being Christians, we don't pay for drugs that might
cause abortions … something that is contrary to our most important beliefs. It
goes against the biblical principles on which we have run this company since day
one,” Hobby Lobby founder David Green wrote in an article for USA Today.
Hobby Lobby
is so committed to those principles that it’s gone to the U.S. Supreme Court to
challenge a provision in the Affordable Care Act that it says requires it
to provide access to insurance covering birth control for its employees, some
forms of which it equates with abortion.
No wonder then, the glee emanating from
some quarters Tuesday when Molly Redden of Mother Jones reported that the company’s retirement plan holds
$73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that make abortion
drugs.
Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan have holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby’s health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices.
These companies include Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes Plan B and ParaGard, a copper IUD, and Actavis, which makes a generic version of Plan B and distributes Ella. Other holdings in the mutual funds selected by Hobby Lobby include Pfizer, the maker of Cytotec and Prostin E2, which are used to induce abortions; Bayer, which manufactures the hormonal IUDs Skyla andMirena; AstraZeneca, which has an Indian subsidiary that manufactures Prostodin, Cerviprime, and Partocin, three drugs commonly used in abortions; and Forest Laboratories, which makes Cervidil, a drug used to induce abortions. Several funds in the Hobby Lobby retirement plan also invested in Aetna and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in many of the health care policies they sell.
The retirement plan comes with a “generous company
match,” which amounted to $3.8 million in 2012.
Investments in these sorts of companies are
commonplace for the typical retirement fund. But Hobby Lobby has been arguing
that it’s anything but typical.
Hobby Lobby did not comment for the Mother Jones
story.
But plenty of other people did.
“Wow,” said the liberal DailyKos.
From Feministing:
Yup, that Hobby Lobby. The company that’s taken their “deeply held” religious objection to contraception all the way to the Supreme Court. The company that thinks allowing their employees to get coverage for certain types of birth control through their insurance plans — plans, mind you, that the employees pay the premium on — amounts to subsidizing immorality. The company that pulls out the world’s smallest violin as it earnestly cries that Obamacare is “forcing them to violate the law or violate their belief that life begins at conception — a choice no company should have to make.”
And here was the headline on the blog Scholars
and Rogues:
Hobby Lobby hypocrisy: 401k plan invests in contraception; Obamacare litigant secretly profiting from the very immorality it publicly opposes.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week in
the case.
Hobby Lobby says its committed to “honoring the Lord
in all we do by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical
principles” and “providing a return on the owner’s investment, sharing the
Lord’s blessings with our employees,” according to the company’s Web site.
According to briefs filed with the Supreme Court,
Hobby Lobby objects to the Obamacare mandate requiring employers to provide
access to policies covering IUDs and the two morning-after pills, Ella and Plan
B, because it believes the contraceptives cause abortion by preventing
implantation of a fertilized egg.
Researchers say these devices don't end pregnancies
like the abortion drug RU-486. Nor do they stop implantation of fertilized eggs.
Rather, these devices stop pregnancy before it happens by making it hard for
sperm to reach the egg or delaying ovulation.
The kicker is that there are “faith based”
investment options for companies like Hobby Lobby that are particular about whom
they do business with. Dan Hardt, a Kentucky financial planner who specializes
in faith-based investing, told Mother Jones that the performances of funds like
the Timothy Plan or Ave Maria Fund, which screen for companies that make
abortion drugs or support stem cell research, are about the same as if they had
not been screened.
Forbes
pointed out that Hobby Lobby has a fiduciary duty under federal law to know
what the company-sponsored 401(k) is investing in for the benefit of its
employees.
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