Hobby Lobby & Contraception: 'It's Complicated'
The Green family, owners of the 609 Hobby Lobby stores, are to conservative Christianity what the Kardashians are to the E! network: poster children. The billionaire believers are outspoken Christians who claim to run their company based on the teachings of the Bible and spend at least one-third of the company’s annual profits on evangelical causes. On March 25th, the Greens prayed together before entering the Supreme Court to argue that their $3.3 billion for-profit business should receive a religious exemption from the Obamacare contraception mandate. Conservative evangelicals everywhere were interceding with them.
Given the way the Green's fight with the federal government has rallied so many believers, one might assume the 77% of Americans who identify themselves as Christian overwhelmingly support the Greens and the battle against contraception. (Hobby Lobby continues to provide insurance coverage for 16 forms of birth control but object to any form of contraception that would terminate a fertilized egg.)
But many believers—namely Christian women—don't see the issue quite the same way.
New analysis of previously released data shows a sizable gender gap among Christians on employer provided contraception.
According to a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) poll of 1,009 Americans, 60 percent of Christian women agree “all employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception or birth control at no cost.” The survey also shows that a majority of Americans—including Catholics and white mainline Protestants—support requiring employers to provide health care that includes free contraception.