Hobby Lobby, Assisted Suicide, and Slippery Slopes…
Rights to tangible goods and services tend to create corresponding duties upon someone to provide them. For example, if I have the right to assisted suicide, and if the right is not to become a dead letter, someone has to assist me. But who, if all the doctors around me disagree with assisted suicide? Will I then have grounds to sue them for infringement of my rights, and if so which of them? Any of them? All of them? The right to assisted suicide will rapidly become a duty to perform it.
That is, unless we understand that a right does not include its fulfillment. I have a right to buy a mansion, but I can’t exercise it because I don’t have enough money. I do not consider my right infringed by this unfortunate limitation; but unfortunately, this is not how most people understand rights.
