Hot Air | Moral Objection Enough to override Contraceptive Mandate: In a stunning decision, a federal judge permanently barred the Department of Health and Human Services from enforcing the contraception mandate under ObamaCare against an employer for moral rather than explicitly religious grounds.
Permanently, until another court reverses it. But the premise is something of a right-back-at-you to those who have been attacking matters of conscience. This judge has given value to objection as a matter of conscience free of any specific religious underpinning.
No duh! say the Conservatives, Constitutionalists, and libertarians. This is basic founding documents stuff. But isn’t it refreshing to see a sitting judge suggest that these protections exist in the Constitution? There are individual rights that exist before and in spite of the laws of man or any contrived use of force the people create to deny them.
No need to fear. The contrivance mongers will find a means to undo the deed. We can’t have people thinking that the secular humanists and moral relativists do not have the right to bleach every worldview but their own from the shared spaces of the American landscape. Not to mention (though here I am mentioning it) the breadth of discussion to be had in opposition to the people contriving a state and giving it the power to deny them their unalienable right of conscience on the entire manifold of common or individual interests.
So, if any moral objection (meaning any objection) is enough to override the contraceptive mandate, then the state has no right to ask us to pay for Planned Parenthood to stay open longer hours or–for that matter–to backstop any other business pursuing any other purpose at our expense.
And we could go on and on… (and I suspect we will).
