We believe that since all citizens can vote, that we all have equal access to society--that our ability to vote is key. However, there is a second understanding of who is constitutionally recognized and this second understanding has to do with personhood. In the US system, white males, corporations, embryos and fetuses all have personhood. Everyone else does not and because everyone else does not have constitutional personhood, it can be almost impossible to get the US Supreme Court to recognize you. This is what occurred in the constitutional battle to be not pay for employee's birth control. The Little Sisters of the Poor are a group of women--women who do not want to pay for birth control because they do not believe in birth control. But in the constitutional battle, the Little Sisters of the Poor are a corporation and as such, they are much more powerful than the employees they are battling. It is not surprising that the Little Sisters of the Poor won their original Supreme Court case. Personhood comes up in the current argument that protesters who are against the stay-at-home orders are making. In many ways, it is the same argument. As long as we have some citizens who are recognized as persons and other citizens who are not constitutionally recognized, the US will never be free. We will always live in bondage, of one sort or another.

Transcript of episode

Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell