Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
The U.S. Supreme Court has commenced three days of hearings in a suit brought against the health care reform legislation that is generating significant controversy in the United States, much of it to do with general claims to freedom of conscience and religion. 26 state attorneys general have challenged the constitutionality of the legislation, and amicus briefs have been filed by seven medical organizations.[National Post]
The Attorney General of Alabama is reported to be seeking to join a lawsuit against the federal government launched by the Eternal Word Television Network to stop the federal government from forcing objecting employers to provide insurance coverage for surgical sterilization, contraceptives and embryocides. The Attorney General considers the Obama administration’s regulation unconstitutional. [WAAY TV]
The State of Washington has announced that it will appeal a decision by a U.S. District Court Judge that held that a state regulation was deliberately intended to deny freedom of conscience to pharmacists, and therefore unconstititional. [Yakima Herald]
Robert K. Vischer of St. Thomas University in Minneapolis warns against The Dangers of Anti-Sharia Laws in First Things. Such legislation, he says, “. . . proposes an unconstitutional double standard.” The attacks on the application of Sharia by American courts, which also apply denominational and private prinicples when adjudicating contract disputes, “fan the flames of religious intolerance while nurturing public acceptance of the notion that the religious commitments of our citizens have no place in our courts.”
“Canon law and biblical principles are not dirty words in the American court system,” writes Professor Vischer, “and Sharia should not be either.”
Opposition to LB461 from various sources, including the Nebraska Board of Medicine and Surgery, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the Nebraska Psychological Association is generating resistance to the bill in the legislature, and may prevent the bill from proceeding further. Supporters of the bill include Family First of Nebraska, Nebraska Catholic Conference, Americans United for Life and the Nebraska Family Council.[Omaha World Herald; Associated Press]