Clinton touted her pro-abortion rights bona fides. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Clinton blasts Hobby Lobby ruling

Hillary Clinton on Monday called the Supreme Court’s ruling in the contraception-related Hobby Lobby case “deeply disturbing.”

The former secretary of state and possible Democratic front-runner skewered the decision during an appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, hours after the Supreme Court ruled that for-profit employers don’t have to provide contraception coverage, mandated under Obamacare, if they have religious objections.


“It’s the first time that our court has said that a closely held corporation has the rights of a person when it comes to religious freedom, which means the corporation’s … [‘closely held’] employers can impose their religious beliefs on their employees, and, of course, denying women the right to contraceptives as part of a health care plan is exactly that,” she said. “I find it deeply disturbing that we are going in that direction.”

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Clinton, who has been on tour to promote her new book, “Hard Choices,” touted her pro-abortion rights bona fides, saying that abortion is a “hard choice” but one that individuals should decide for themselves. And she argued that the Hobby Lobby decision is a setback for women’s rights , and at one point called it a step toward a “really bad slippery slope,” noting that some employers don’t believe in, for example, blood transfusions.

“It’s very troubling that a sales clerk at Hobby Lobby who need contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health care plan because her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception,” Clinton said. Her remarks came during a Facebook Live session at Aspen.

Asked about a measure signed by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, tied to protecting religious beliefs under federal law, Clinton said it was authorized “because, at that point, there were legitimate cases of discrimination against religions. The people who wanted to build a church, or a synagogue, or a mosque in a community and they fit into the zoning, but the community was saying, ‘We don’t want one of those in our community’.”

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She said that Monday’s ruling is “certainly a use” of that law “that no one foresaw.”

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, another Democrat who has expressed clear interest in a 2016 run, also weighed in on the Supreme Court ruling, tweeting: “No woman should have her health care decisions made by her boss. Period. This decision is wrong and a setback for women’s health.”

He also signed off on a fundraising pitch for Wendy Davis, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Texas who made a national name for herself after a filibuster in the state Legislature last year in which she temporarily derailed a restrictive abortion measure.

Maggie Haberman contributed to this report.