The recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby’s religious rights is a puzzling one.

I thought that one of the intentions of Obamacare is to allow folks access to a baseline standard of health care services, without discrimination.

If Hobby Lobby can pick and choose which packages of coverage it offers employers, then employees of Hobby Lobby are not provided with the same baseline of health care coverage. Employees who might want other items as part of their coverage packages would have to purchase their health care outside of the employer-contributed plan.

My primary concern here is that this ruling opens the door to discriminate in many ways based on religious premises that could go beyond the issue of birth control to services such as coverage for vaccinations in infancy/childhood or palliative care later in life.

Hobby Lobby’s case was chosen by the Supreme Court, it seems, specifically because the company was fighting birth control – a hot topic, to say the least. Am I inaccurate to worry that this ruling, in a larger sense, attacks Obamacare in general?

As far as the birth control situation is concerned, I intend to never shop at Hobby Lobby (never have anyway) and certainly never work there. I feel this way because the values of Hobby Lobby do not at all match my own.

I think it is interesting that Hobby Lobby’s owners want to be able to honor their personal values, but they don’t extend that same thought process to their employees. It seems as though they’ve decided that they get to choose for their employees.

Maria Noyes

Waterville