Constitutionally Correct : ‘Contracepting’ Christians from the Medical Profession: A Response to Marci Hamilton

re: "Law professor Marci Hamilton, a regular contributor to Findlaw's parade of abortion enthusiasts (see, e.g., here, here, here, and here), penned a screed today against religious freedom in the State of Washington. Her article is well-crafted as a propaganda piece in the ongoing drumbeat to ban Christians from the medical profession, but it is somewhat short on rational analysis. Three of Hamilton's tactics are instructive to those involved in protecting religious freedom and the sanctity of human life. / [snip]... / The professor's next sleight of hand betrays her desire to force Christians from pharmacy and medicine altogether. Try to follow this "reasoning": "As abortion opponents have succeeded in using state laws to trim back the impact of Roe v. Wade, they have also been emboldened to seek to prohibit the distribution of contraceptives. Accordingly, pharmacists who are "pro-life" have refused to fill prescriptions for the Plan B pill." /Allow me to translate from law-professor into English: Pro-life people have succeeded in passing state laws that marginally restrict abortion. Pro-life medical professionals also don't want the government to force them to participate in killing children. Ergo, pro-life people are outlawing drugs that solely prevent an embryo from existing in the first place. /The problems with this argument are multiple, including the fact that a pharmacist who decides not to participate in a process that kills embryos has "prohibited" exactly no one from dispensing "contraceptives." Professor Hamilton no doubt recognizes this irregularity in her logic. What we should draw from this example is that if the debate is over whether doctors and pharmacists should be forced to kill people, abortion advocates lose, and they know it. Their approach, accordingly, is to declare that religious freedom advocates are outlawing contraceptives. The tactic is bizarre, but unfortunately typical. In the process, they equate the traditional belief of billions of people on the planet that it is wrong to kill living human beings, to an "imagine[d] . . . religious sect [that] permit[s] children to die of treatable medical ailments," arguing that both stand on the same ground and should be forced to violate their beliefs. Thus are abortion advocates not only fighting the outlawing of contraceptives, but they are the real child defenders in this debate. / Cases like this are in fact about whether medical professionals should be forced to kill people. Abortion advocates want to force pharmacists to dispense embryo-killing drugs, doctors to perform abortions and practice them in medical school, employers to pay for methods that kill unborn human lives, and taxpayers to pay for it all. They have arguments about why forcing these things is a good idea--mainly that they think some human beings, including embryos (or 39 week old babies) are not "people." But they're not willing to defend that position in public, because moral reasoning and basic common sense rejects it outright. So they hide their desire for government compulsion that forces Christians to choose between their livelihood and religion..."...