Nuns of the Little Sisters of the Poor at
the Supreme Court, March 2016. (File photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
The Supreme Court has ruled
this morning in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a charitable order of
Catholic nuns, deciding once again that the government cannot compel them to
subsidize birth control and abortion-inducing drugs, as is required by the
Health and Human Services Department’s contraceptive mandate attached to
Obamacare.
The seven-justice majority
upheld the expanded religious and conscience exemptions established by the
Trump administration, enabling employers with moral objections to decline to
subsidize these drugs in employees’ insurance coverage. Justice Thomas wrote
for the majority, Justice Alito authored a concurring opinion, and Justices
Breyer and Kagan authored another. Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented.
This decision is certainly a
gratifying one, especially after having watched for the last decade as
government officials — first from the Obama administration and now from
progressive state governments — repeatedly dragged religious employers to court
for refusing to comply with the mandate. At the very least, it’s clear that the
First Amendment protects religious believers from being made complicit in
practices that they view as morally wrong.
What’s even more troubling
about this particular violation of free exercise, though, is the nature of the
policy in question. The contraceptive mandate, remember, never even passed
through Congress; it was tacked onto Obamacare after its passage by
ideologically motivated, progressive bureaucrats in the HHS Department, then
vigorously defended by the Obama White House (including, it should be noted,
long-time Catholic Joe Biden, who showed no signs of a troubled conscience as
his administration hauled charitable nuns and Catholic universities to court
for meekly objecting to underwriting abortifacients).
In short, while it’s all well
and good to celebrate a victory on the grounds of the First Amendment and
religious freedom, we should keep in mind that the substance of this policy is
a mistake, even on its own terms and even for the non-religious. No one, from
the Obama-administration officials who promulgated it to the
pro-abortion-rights feminists tearing out their hair over this decision, has
once articulated a satisfactory reason for why anyone — let alone Catholic nuns
or Christian business owners — must be conscripted into funding an employee’s
birth control.
The belief that the government,
or employers compelled by the government, ought to subsidize contraception
stems from a fundamentally incorrect, irrational view of contraception as a
necessary component of holistic health care. On this view, a properly functioning
female reproductive system is diseased and pregnancy is a disease to be
prevented. This is simply untrue, whether or not one adheres to any particular
faith tradition. One very well might like to have birth-control drugs for one
reason or another, but when used for contraceptive purposes rather than medical
ones, it is not health care by any reasonable definition of
the term; it prevents no disease and cures no malady. The mandate was, on its
face, an effort to subsidize birth control — but it was first and foremost an
effort to conscript the entire nation into validating a disordered view of the
human body and of sexuality.
Notwithstanding the
intentionally divisive claim from radical progressives that conservatives are
angling to remove all access to birth control, no one is advocating returning
to pre-Griswold America. But it shouldn’t be difficult to
comprehend why there exists no right to government-mandated,
employer-subsidized, “free” contraception — and certainly no right strong
enough to coerce others to pay for it. We shouldn’t let the accurate argument
in favor of First Amendment protections distract us from the fact that this
policy is rotten, religious beliefs aside.
ALEXANDRA DESANCTIS is
a staff writer for National Review and a visiting fellow at the
Ethics and Public Policy Center. @xan_desanctis
______________
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By DAVID HARSANYI | National | National Review
Sister Loraine McGuire with Little Sisters of the
Poor speaks to the media in Washington, D.C., March 23, 2016. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters
The Bill of Rights be damned.
The other day, in a
virtual rally called “Fight Back for Fair Courts,” longtime Obama aide Dan
Pfeiffer conceded that “the Supreme Court is the greatest
obstacle to progressive policies in America.”
It’s been clear for some time
that the Constitution — as written — is incompatible with a progressive agenda.
This is the reality that drives the hysterics over Federalist Society–endorsed
judicial appointments, over the Electoral College, and over other
counter-majoritarian institutions. It’s why Pfeiffer and others advocate expanding,
really neutering, the Supreme Court. It’s why a growing number of
left-wingers argue that the Senate is a fundamentally unfair institution.
Constitutional restrictions on
centralized power are a core problem for progressives. So is the Bill of Rights,
which protects due process, open discourse, and the right to self-defense — all
of which are now regarded as old-fashioned.
This week, two decisions by the
court upheld religious liberty and conscience rights against incursions by the
state. Both decisions represent modest victories, attained with liberal help.
One ruling held that the ministerial exception to employment law (which allows
religious organizations to choose who their own ministers are without being
sued) applies also to teachers at religious schools who are responsible for
religious education. In the other case, the court upheld the right of Americans
not to participate in mandatory contraception coverage under Obamacare’s
employer mandate.
For years, left-wing pundits
mocked conservatives who maintained that Obamacare’s employer mandates abridged
basic religious freedom — laughing as if this idea was the silliest, most
fraudulent thing they’d ever heard. In a 2012 editorial, the New York
Times scoffed at the “phony crisis over ‘religious liberty’ engendered
by the right” and praised President Obama for standing his ground on “an
essential principle — free access to birth control for any woman.” At some
point in the ideological evolution of the American Left, “free access” to
abortifacients was transformed into an “essential principle” of American life
while the concept of religious liberty was consigned to existence between
quotation marks.
Both cases ended up 7–2.
_____________________
Court rulings keep Trump’s financial records
private for now
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court issued a mixed
verdict Thursday on demands for President Donald Trump’s financial records that
will keep his tax returns, banking and other documents out of the public eye for
the time being.
