A Supreme Court ruling today (6/30/2014) upheld our fundamental right to use our own private property in accordance with our own moral beliefs. The ruling gives priority to natural religious and private property rights over the politically created guarantee that private business owners will provide employees with a health insurance benefit that covers certain birth control pills.
The owners of Hobby Lobby objected to the Obama Care legal requirement that they provide their employees with an insurance benefit that covered morning after “abortion” pills. The law was in direct conflict with their sincerely held, honest and peaceful religious beliefs. Hobby Lobby has never used force or fraud to get people to either work for or patronize their business.
Governments are the only organizations that can legally use force against peaceful people. We created our government to use force, if necessary, to protect our fundamental right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Government force should not be used to make peaceful people act against their own religious beliefs – no matter how good the cause or the intentions.
Libertarian Perspectives 
Kurt,
Borrowing from your self-description, I am a peaceful, honest, pro-life, Christian theist, Tea-Party-type conservative Republican. Though being pro-choice comports nicely with your atheistic and libertarian worldview, it contradicts your claim to being peaceful and honest (in the context of abortion). I would argue that both logic and biology (not to mention theology) tip the scales heavily in favor of a fetus of any age being a human being in its earliest stages of development. Given this, it isn’t honest to say categorically that a fetus isn’t human. And, with more than a little reason to believe that it is, abortion is anything but a peaceful procedure. When an atheist sacrifices his common sense at the alter of libertarianism, many unborn human beings will suffer and die.
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Kurt,
I’d like to amend the last sentence of my previous reply to read as follows: “When people of various stripes sacrifice their common sense at any man-made altar, many unborn human beings will inevitably suffer and die.”
Also, since I originally failed to comment on the main point of your blog, let me say now that I agree that no government should be able to coerce (legally or otherwise) a private company to use its property in any way that opposes its owner’s/owners’ moral beliefs.
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John,
My being pro-choice does not mean that I would choose abortion, or that I would advise some else to choose abortion. I have never been in the position to either choose or advise abortion. I hope that I never am. But, in a situation where the baby is not viable – for example the first tri-mester – I do not think it should be a crime punishable by government for a woman to elect abortion.
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Kurt,
The problem, from a theistic standpoint, is that you’re willing for people to arbitrarily make life and death decisions for others with no real idea whether what they’re deciding is ethical or not. I use the term “arbitrarily” because, for example, you believe the test should be [viability]. Others believe there should be virtually no restrictions (but I think most of them are libertarians — just kidding).
Also, I’m curious: What should I take away from knowing that you might not choose abortion, but you’re willing for millions of others to do so?
When this whole process started with Roe v. Wade, it was promised that abortions would be “rare.” Well, 50,000,000 or so abortions later, I guess we can safely say that has not been the case. You, and millions of others, have become desensitized to the carnage that was once precious, innocent life.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness no longer applies to the smallest and most defenseless, but whatever — I mean, “what an inconvenience a little one can be. And besides, unprotected sex is fun, so back off.” Oh yes, how oppressive the War on Women has become!
Just some thoughts.
John
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John,
I’m sure most pregnancies that result in abortion are the result of voluntary acts. Some ore not. In either case, what right does the mother to control the use of her own body?
For those who believe that life is to be protected beginning at the time of conception, there should be at least an equal right on the part of the mother and baby. If there is danger to the life of the mother, must she sacrifice herself? How much danger must she be in before she in order to justify attempting to give birth knowing for certain that the baby will die.
Your belief that a one day old fetus should have the same right to life as a viable human, and that a woman should not be able to take a “day-after pill” because it is abortion, and that she should be considered to have committed murder for taking such a pill, just doesn’t seem right to me. I understand that your belief is not arbitrary, but it is based only on faith in the supernatural.
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