The Landfill on the Road to Women’s Rights: On the Hobby Lobby Decision

• DateJuly 19, 2014
• AuthorMary Heather
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I was visiting family in Seneca Falls, New York when they announced the decision.  By which I mean the (divided) Supreme Court decision that grants for-profit businesses (owned by a small group) the right to refuse coverage of birth control for their female employees, on the basis of their religious objection.  Or in other words, the demotion of women’s rights beneath protecting the religious persuasion of a private corporation.

The official language:  “As applied to closely held corporations, the Health and Human Services regulations imposing the contraceptive mandate violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

Interesting word, violate.  But hold that thought and let it soften in your pocket.  I’ll get to that in a minute.

I mention my location not because I expect to be asked someday, “Where were you when the Hobby Lobby decision came out?”  But I will always remember, because Seneca Falls is the birthplace of women’s rights.

In July 1848 —166 years ago this weekend— Seneca Falls hosted the First Women’s Rights Convention, at which the “social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman” were discussed, and during which the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was signed and adopted to formalize the fight for women’s rights.  Seneca Falls is to women’s rights as Philadelphia is to the Declaration of Independence.  As in, “We hold these truths to be to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”

But one would not conclude this based upon the intersection of women’s history and current events — which is exactly where I stood as I led my 10-year-old daughter through the visitor’s center at the Women’s Rights National Historic Park.  We moved from exhibit to exhibit — bar graphs charting the disparity between professions occupied by men and women over time, copies of antique marriage certificates and etiquette books indoctrinating service and obedience to one’s husband.

And all the while, I was explaining to her how things used to be, how difficult it was for women back then to reach their fullest potential, back when the religious code prohibited a woman from postponing or escaping her childbearing destiny.  On the outside, I was acting as if the skies had cleared and my daughter was free to grow up under her own standards, unencumbered by someone else’s dogma.  But inside, the Supreme Court’s decision deflated me.  After all this time and all this work, our society still does not fully and consistently allow women to transcend the function of their wombs.

Why?  Because doing so might violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Violate: To do harm to a person, to break a rule, a promise. To treat with disrespect.  I wonder, did the Supreme Court majority consider the ways in which some organized religions have violated women?  I’ve seen exhibits in the women’s rights museum that might be entered into evidence.  But it seems the path between Washington and Seneca Falls has been neglected and forgotten.

*

Today, the road to Seneca Falls from the NY State Thruway is tarnished with the presence of Seneca Meadows, the largest active landfill in New York, which accepts roughly 6,000 tons per day of municipal solid waste from five surrounding states.  It looms over Route 414, a mountain erected by the convergence of capitalistic greed and unrestricted waste.  Wetlands and agricultural fields have been displaced by 400 acres of capped and terraced trash with high-wire nets to catch the flyaway plastic bags, and vanilla-scented misters to cover the putrid smell.

When I first started coming here, first started calling this place home, Seneca Meadows was nothing but a sign with an arrow pointing to a distant landfill cell, not even visible from the road. But now it towers over the rural highway, hovering, casting a shadow over the history of this place — eclipsing the road to the birthplace of women’s rights as if it has no meaning, no significance.

What started as a nuisance has expanded into something that stirs a certain fury in my core — like a clearcut forest, or an assault on human rights.  Why am I so upset?  Because a corporation’s “personhood” with protected rights has been solidified in less time than it took a woman to earn that status.  Because a corporation can claim religious objection to block her access to those hard-fought legal rights.

This is the landscape that my daughters must view?  These are the rules they must accept?

I think this Hobby Lobby decision is masquerading as a little sign with an arrow — the uninformed quick to point out the narrow scope of Hobby Lobby’s original complaint, or the limited scope of Justice Alito’s blueprint for religious exemption from the rules.

But experience has shown the malignancy of trash and injustice.  In the blink of an eye, this decision has been, and will continue to be used as precedent for discrimination, and for imposing further limitations on women’s access to contraception.  In the blink of an eye, that mountain will grow and grow and grow.

Photo credits:

Seneca Meadows landfill images courtesy of Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

Seneca Falls welcome sign image courtesy of Self-Rescuing Princess Society blog

About Mary Heather

I am an East-coaster and a West-coaster. I am an academic and a creative spirit. I am an environmental scientist who always wanted to write, and a writer with a nagging nostalgia for the complexities of environmental science. Above all, I am a mother — so whether I’m writing about the natural world, family, or place, I like to consider my work as environmental advocacy in the broadest sense.