Increase in Freedom Enrages Left
A classmate who shall remain nameless just sent this Suzanne Goldenberg article to the student body. The student's preface read as follows:
It's starting already... Want to make a difference? Call your House Representative and Senators and tell them, as a constituent, that you disapprove of this bill. Tell them that this bill constitutes an _undue burden_ under the Planned Parenthood v. Casey test*, reminding them that, regardless of one's own personal beliefs, constitutional rights are just that, and cannot be overturned by acts of Congress (e.g., Congress is not allowed to permit segregation). Let them know you don't want to begin the holidays thinking about all of the women who are about to experience great bodily harm or even death because Congress has helped to prevent access to safe abortions.My response (to the student body) read as follows:
Congress adds a clause to its spending bill allowing hospitals and insurance companies to refuse to perform abortions.
This sounds like an increase in freedom to me. Women are still free to seek abortions and have them performed, they've just gotta find someone willing to perform it. And those groups who find abortion morally repugnant are free to decline to perform the procedure. It's kind of the way the world works for countless goods and services. I have the constitutional right to bear arms, but the gun dealer can certainly refuse to sell to me. Forcing a doctor, under color of state law, to perform a procedure that he finds morally repugnant, itself violates constitutional freedoms of association and free exercise. Abortion may be a constitutional right under Roe v. Wade, but it's not an affirmative right. Somehow I don't think women are going to have a hard time finding someone willing to terminate their respective fetuses. Where's the beef?

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