If people want to deny corporations a conscience, how can they ever again demand that corporations act morally, conscientiously?
The Supreme Court was right to allow corporations to be exempt from the mandate to pay for abortion pills or contraception when their leaders have established religious reasons against them. Moral issues can stand as questions for the liberty of conscience – whether individual conscience or corporate conscience.
That liberty of conscience empowers individuals, religious institutions, and corporations – as the Supreme Court just now made clear on the last day of June! The protections of the liberty of conscience for years have allowed people with a track record of pacifism to be exempt from military service and also for hospital nurses and doctors who object to abortion to be scheduled for other surgeries only. “Conscientious objectors” have had a long, distinguished, respected, empowered history in America.
Oddly, those who attack a corporate right to choose allege that it is obvious that corporations do not have consciences – and so that they cannot be “conscientious objectors.” How are those attackers so blind? [Full text]