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Friday, July 18, 2014

Eden (Organic) Foods Following Hobby Lobby Lead. Online Boycott Initiative


Organic pioneer faces boycott over birth control. "The company, which started as a food co-op, is owned and run by Michael Potter, a practicing Catholic who similarly doesn’t want to provide birth control to his employees. In fact, Potter’s objections go farther than those that took the Hobby Lobby case all the way to the Supreme Court....Eden Foods filed a lawsuit last year, seeking exemption on religious grounds, and lost. Following the Supreme Court’s decision on June 30, Eden’s case is being reconsidered. The renewed legal push by Eden has prompted calls for a boycott of its products. An online petition has been signed by some 150,000 people amid vocal concern about carrying Eden products in some of the country’s most prominent food co-ops." Susan Berfield in Bloomberg Businessweek.

Both parties are politicking over Hobby Lobby by legislating. "Political observers said all along that Senate Democrats could not garner the Republican support needed to reach 60 votes. Instead, they had their eye on November elections....In 2012, Democrats hung onto some seats by painting Republicans as anti-women....Senate Republicans have announced their own post-Hobby Lobby bill to ensure employers could not block their employees from obtaining birth control. Republican Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Orrin Hatch of Utah said before Wednesday's vote that the Hobby Lobby ruling was about constitutional religious freedoms, not women's rights." Annika McGinnis and Emily Stephenson in Reuters.

The Senate's pushback on abortion restrictions. "Also unlikely to get to the president’s desk, at least this year, is the 'Women’s Health Protection Act,' which got a hearing before the Judiciary Committee....The bill, which was introduced last year, would outlaw most state and local abortion restrictions, including any that 'single out the provision of abortion services for restrictions that are more burdensome than those restrictions imposed on medically comparable procedures,' that do not 'advance women’s health or the safety of abortion services,' and that 'make abortion services more difficult to access.'" Julie Rovner in Kaiser Health News.



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