Abortion Lawsuit Reports Controversial

This is the screen grab in a blog post entitled "Wapo joins the war on reproductive freedom."  An excerpt is provided:

Attorneys for Paige Casey said in a lawsuit filed in Prince William County Circuit Court that CVS, which owns MinuteClinic, exempted the nurse for more than 2½ years from prescribing certain contraceptive drugs or devices that cause an abortion. It specifically cited Plan B and Ella, which are commonly referred to as morning-after pills. Casey was granted the accommodation after she wrote a request to the company stating her Catholic beliefs, the lawsuit said.

Then: "To refer to morning-after pills as “abortion-inducing” is just flat misinformation. Absolutely inexcusable."  

The headline states what the nurse practitioner "says" happened.  Then, the text says what the "lawsuit" filed "cited."  Washington Post so far itself is citing something someone else said.  The article was updated but the date cited is before the date of the blog post, which expresses something that got some notice elsewhere.

[The current subtitle is notably different: "Paige Casey says the company accommodated her Catholic beliefs, which include opposition to the morning after pill, for years, then changed course."  One supposes it was updated upon pressure and requests for clarification. As the process should work. And, this happens regularly -- I have made no detailed analysis, but by mere observation, have seen multiple articles change to some degree over time, including headlines.]

The subtitle cited references her "Catholic beliefs," which is another way that the article repeatedly doesn't merely itself say things. It is doing what is repeatedly criticized in a somewhat different context -- transcribing what a specific side is saying.  

Reference is made in the article (again, dated before the blog post, but unsure what version it saw, in part since it makes no mention of it though more than one comment does) of a "clarification" that says: "This story has been clarified and updated to include additional information about the medical use of Ella and Plan B as well as Catholic doctrine on abortion."

The article (at least now) notes the position of the FDA:

Plan B and Ella are the only two drugs mentioned by name in the lawsuit. They stop pregnancy by preventing ovulation or the implanting of a fertilized egg, according to the Food and Drug Administration, which classifies both drugs as “emergency contraception” and says neither drug can terminate “an existing pregnancy.”

And, the Catholic Church:

Catholic teaching says, however, that life begins at conception when a sperm fertilizes an egg. The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Human Life in 2010 wrote that any drug that prevents the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus, “is really nothing other than a chemically induced abortion.”

The headline might mislead but LOTS of litigation regards claims ("says") which are inaccurate. The article spells out what she means and the typical understanding of what the drugs do.  What is important here -- again to make sure people understand -- is to clarify the other side.  So, for instance, someone might "say" the 2020 election was stolen.  A reference to what courts and election authorities have found would be useful.

I think by now we should be able to judge that just because someone "says" something based on religious belief, it is not actually true.  A headline can mislead the unwary, lazy, and those who don't think things through.  Take this very case.  Again, think things through.  The woman has specific Catholic beliefs that very well might clash with many people's views.  Many do not think life begins at conception, especially to the degree the "life" is so important that destruction of it means "abortion."

The matter is freighted enough that it is important to be careful.  The new subtitle clarifies just had broad her beliefs are.  The reader will start to be on guard.  "Wait. Morning after pill?"   The text then discusses her belief, the charge she made, as well as what the FDA has held. It helps the reader see why CVS might have decided that a policy that provides an exemption for beliefs about "abortion" specifically would not apply here.

It is acceptable in my view to caption a headline about a lawsuit by stating what the party is alleging.  The reader should not assume just because a person alleges something that it is true.  A person can allege they were fired for "x" and the facts might be that they were not.  The facts might show that they were fired for "y."  The headline is not saying "x" happened.

This is not exactly calling "torture" some euphemism like "enhanced interrogation" or blatantly misleading the public by simply taking the other side's labels at face value.  The very title (even the unedited one) flags that it is citing what a litigant is SAYING.  This is not joining the war on reproductive freedom.  I welcome their edits that improve things. 

The case also flags again (we've been down this path before) that words can be stretched so far that it just isn't workable.  I think it a constitutional violation as well as bad policy to not allow people to choose abortion among other options when using government sourced health insurance dollars.  Abortion is not somehow special in this regard. People have a range of beliefs on the question, usually in some fashion tied to religion.  The government should not selectively choose this to deny choice.

So be it.  Abortion, a matter of life and death, is treated special. As a matter of principle, it is not unreasonable for someone to be careful regarding such choices. The importance of the issue underlines why it is bad for the government to take it out of the hands of the person (among other things). If a person is denied a trivial choice, it can be bad, but it is more trivial. Questions of life and death, including euthanasia, abortion, and sacraments surrounding the process (baptism or the like) are special.

The line drawing here is complicated, but as I have noted in the past, lines are drawn in many ways. The issue here is that at some point the line is unreasonable.  So, not funding abortion is one thing. But, how about if the insurance company funds it, though you still have to include the insurance as part of the person's employment package?  Or, if the person uses their salary from your company to have the abortion?  Or, someone has a Uber business and refuses to drop the person near a known clinic.

Then, there is the very definition of "abortion."  I got on with someone who cited Latin word origins here and so on. It got tedious. Definitions are for one thing a result of social usage. You might think the usage is bad, but the fact it developed past Latin etymological roots is of limited notice here.  The person eventually assumed a fertilized egg was not "something" as required for their definition of "abortion," which required something that was in the act of "becoming" to be stopped.  

This is getting into the merits.  The same with the scientific reality of how Plan B operates. For the longest time, I looked into this before, there was an understanding such drugs at times at least acted on fertilized eggs. The science appears (though I really don't want to rest on the fact this is 100% clear; a small chance of error in a death penalty context is enough, right?) now to show not so.  How serious of a risk is necessary to "count" here?

The woman thinks a fertilized egg is the start of human life and destroying said egg and expelling it from the body is a form of "abortion."  Birth control pills in general might do that.  So might various other drugs as a side effect. What level of complicity is required to count there?  A range of medicines might in some way clash with beliefs. If you do not want problems, find another job.  

The average person -- to the degree they think about it -- are willing to make an exception for "abortion" as well as various things because the something significant is involved.  If the thing involved is going to apply so broadly to not be significant at all, the difference becomes meaningless. 

The religious liberty claim doesn't turn on "abortion" at the end of the day since religious liberty exemptions do not only apply there. OTOH, "abortion" sounds special.  If "exercising beliefs" becomes some open-ended thing, which harms third parties, there are problems. I personally think religious freedom warrants some balancing, even if in some cases it affects other people [letting a person pray at a designated time, e.g., might require someone else to fill that slot; maybe the person likes to eat lunch then and would having their druthers do so].  But, there are limits.

(Reference is made by one group in the article about "tolerance" when the matter here is a nurse who works at a CVS clinic, who doesn't want to do part of her job because of a broad idea of what "abortion" means. Words like "tolerance" are nice and all, but without context, they can be bottom-less empty vessels.)  

So, the story has various angles. First, there is a matter of reader comprehension, and what is a reasonable degree of careful drafting to avoid misleading the reader. Then, there is the bottom line merits of the whole thing.  This includes an absolutist view that stretches normal language past it where it reasonably should go.  This at some point leads to absurd results.

This is not because -- granting all the premises -- it's just factually impossible to say an "abortion" occurs. It is more that "abortion" has somewhat more limited meaning and before third party harm / exemptions involving public accommodations occur, something more should exist than what is at stake here.  

The alternative is extreme and likely (especially since abortion bans like this are already so) dubiously selective.  Take the latest horror show lower court opinion handed down involving drugs to prevent HIV. It unsurprisingly upset particularly gay males (three legal minds I follow on Twitter apply here) and others who are particularly affected by coverage of those drugs.  The argument is weak but some will flag that "homosexuality" per se is "controversial."  We are at the stage where even vaccines can be controversial, but even now the Supreme Court mostly doesn't want to touch that issue.  Not so much alleged "abortifacients."  

The "argument" made, however, is open-ended.  There are a range of drugs that in some fashion interferes with some religions. If vaccines developed from some cell lines originated in some cells somehow a result of an aborted fetus from c. 1980 is enough, the same might be true for one from a pig.  I surely am not going to begrudge that sentiment, given my own vegan friendly sentiments.  The connection need not be pleasant either. Racist beliefs can be involved. 

The reality of the situation will be that artificial lines will be drawn. They always are to some extent.  But, here, there will be an added level of problem. People will grant religiously based exemptions, which will harm third parties & involve public areas as compared to private beliefs and a reasonable level of private actions that are the core of religious freedom. And, it will turn on subjective line drawing of what is "controversial."  The whole thing will add insult on top of injury.

This has been a long time coming.  Years ago, before the Supreme Court protected same sex marriage, law professors argued that we should protect sexual orientation (including sex discrimination tied to it) differently from race and at least some degree sex (since the two overlap, race was a more clear case).  This is an honest accounting as compared to those you cited religious belief but deep down ("I'm not a racist!") weren't consistent. 

What about her case?  I think at the end of the day that the company has a strong case.  A clinic is going to have various basic services that a person working there will have a duty to take part in.  Various ways can be imagined to accommodate.  But, what if some opposes all birth control for those unmarried or in general?  Or, if someone wants to make specific judgment calls that such and such care is "immoral"?  

At some point, it is problematic.  And, if the line is "abortion," it is fair to apply some line on what that means, especially to the degree that concerns about complicity makes things even more open-ended.  The article suggests the CVS followed accepted norms when drawing the line, at least reasonably so.  OTOH, given the rules these days, she very well might win.  And, the analysis is likely going to be ad hoc in reality.