Hobby Lobby owners are wrong!

Right-wing media have spent nearly a decade making false claims about birth control — and now those falsehoods have found their way into the mouths of Supreme Court justices.

The Supreme Court on March 25 heard consolidated arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, which examine whether for-profit businesses can deny employees health insurance coverage based on the owners’ personal religious beliefs, a radical revision of First Amendment and corporate law. The owners of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga argue they should not be forced by the government to provide their employees insurance which covers certain forms of contraception, because they believe those types of birth control can cause abortions.

The owners are wrong. Medical experts have confirmed they are wrong, repeatedly and strenuously, including experts at the National Institute of Health, the Mayo Clinic and the International Federation of Gynecology. The contraceptives Hobby Lobby objects to — which include emergency contraceptives like Plan B and long-term contraceptives like Intrauterine Devices (IUDs) — delay an egg from being fertilized, and as the former assistant commissioner for women’s health at the FDA noted, “their only connection to abortion is that they can prevent the need for one.”

Despite this overwhelming medical evidence, the myth that some of the contested forms of birth control are “abortifacients” has gone all the way to the Supreme Court — and now has been repeated by some of the justices themselves. During the oral arguments in the Hobby Lobby case, Justice Antonin Scalia responded to a point made by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, the lawyer for the government, by referring to “birth controls … that are abortifacient.”

More From Media Matters: