|
The mutual fund managers choose which securities to invest in. I would assume most mutual funds would include pharmaceutical stock which would be very beneficial, financially, to the mutual fund's investors, and would be wise choices for the managers to make. The investors don't get to decide what the prospectus of the portfolio is, or to customize with their choice of securities. The investors are trading with the mutual fund, not the individual companies that make up the portfolio. The Salon article could also have found other products that various companies in the portfolios manufactured which were not contraceptive related but also against personal values of HL owners. It would probably not be possible for them to invest in any mutual funds if all the products which were produced by the companies which make up the portfolios had to be morally pure to the HL owners.
And, the pharmaceutical companies that create abortifacients also produce many life saving products. Can the companies be separated from their good and evil products. Should HL also bar the life saving drugs from their health insurance plans because the companies also produce abortifacients?
Should the HL owners prohibit themselves from using the various "wonder" drugs available to help with heart, cholesterol, blood pressure, cancer, etc. etc., or the topical ointments for skin problems, etc., etc., because the companies also produce abortifacients. Now if the HL owners themselves used the abortion pills they don't want to provide, THAT would be the hypocrisy, the lying, the "stunt," that should be their downfall.
The HL owners cannot control what the rest of the world does, nor what all the companies which make those things we live by produce. It would be virtually impossible for the HL'rs to exist in society if they had to abstain from every necessity, or useful items, if those things had to be pure of touch by something or someone who or which was disapproved by their religion. Even the government is comprised of individuals or regulations that run counter to their belief. Render unto Caesar what it Caesar's and unto God what is God's.
And that is the real question here. That is why Jim keeps bringing up the Constitution rather than personal opinion of right and wrong. The problem began here, not with HL owners desire to refuse the providing of certain insurance, but with the government mandating that they must. It is not only about what is Caesar's and what is God's, it is about fundamental unalienable rights, and if we actually have them. And if the HL owners are consistent, they would support the right of Muslims and of atheists, or believers in Gaea, or pantheists, of agnostics, or centrists, or "liberals," or "conservatives," or even devil worshippers, to refuse to offer government dictated insurance.
If we grant the Federal Government the power to mandate that we buy a particular product or be penalized if we don't, then we give it the precedent to do so with any product. If we do so, we give the government absolute power over our lives. That is, ultimately, what the passage of the ACA, and resistance to it, is about.
|