Hobby Lobby is the huge, billion-dollar nationwide superstore retailer of arts and crafts supplies that is suing the Obama administration over Obamacare. The company, privately-owned by a Christian family, claims it objects — on religious grounds — to the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that requires all employee insurance programs to offer contraception services at no charge. Hobby Lobby says that offering its employees drugs that prevent contraction or that induce abortion violates the company’s deeply0held religious beliefs, and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court last month that even signing a federal form that would allow them to opt out is too much of a religious burden.
So imagine the world’s surprise last night when Mother Jones — the same folks who revealed the Mitt Romney 47 percent videos — published a report finding that Hobby Lobby’s 401(k) plan invests in companies that manufacture contraception and even abortion-inducing drugs.
Mother Jones’ Molly Redden reports that Hobby Lobby’s 401(k) employee retirement plan as of December 2012 “held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions,” and that “Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).”
Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan have holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby’s health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices.
Redden adds that “for years, Hobby Lobby’s health insurance plans did cover Plan B and Ella. It was only in 2012, when the Greens considered filing a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, that they dropped these drugs from the plan.”
Rick Ungar, a writer at Forbes say the revelation “may be the most stunning example of hypocrisy in my lifetime.”
You simply can’t say that you will give your all in defense of your closely held beliefs when it suits you while seeking to make money in violation of those beliefs. You also cannot pretend you were simply negligent in learning what investments you hold if you are going to hold yourself out as an example of righteousness.
Image by Dave Parker via Flickr
Previously:
Watch: Jon Stewart Explains The Hobby Lobby Supreme Court Case
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