Supreme Court Blocks Birth Control Mandate

This week, the Obama administration once again found itself rebuked by the long arm of the law. For the fifth time, the Supreme Court came down against the administration on the matter of forcing employers to pay for abortion through Obamacare.

Those who thought this was settled once and for all by the Hobby Lobby case have been dismayed to see case after case arrive at the Supreme Court’s doorstep. This time around, the case in question comes out of Pennsylvania, where the feds are trying to force Catholic organizations to cover abortifacient drugs for their employees.

Judge Samuel Alito issued an order Wednesday blocking an appeals court ruling that would have enforced Obama’s mandate. The order gives the Obama administration until Monday to respond with an explanation of why these plainly religious groups are not permitted to opt out of the coverage.

One can’t help but wonder how many court rulings have to be blocked, thrown out, and overturned before this president understands that what he is attempting is blatantly unconstitutional. Before it was railroaded by the LGBT lobby, the entire structural premise of Indiana’s religious freedom law was intended to prevent another situation like Hobby Lobby. Indiana Republicans didn’t want to see another of their treasured businesses be forced to spend millions of dollars to escape the religious persecution inherent in Obamacare. Business owners should not be forced to choose between reasonable religious convictions and their livelihoods.

We can’t spend the next decade playing judicial whack-a-mole with our religious liberties. Liberals like to talk about the “settled science” of climate change, but they seem unable to appreciate that few things are more “settled” than America’s belief in freedom of religion. It was enshrined in 1791, with the adoption of the First Amendment. There is not, so far as I know, any conflicting Amendment protecting gay wedding cakes or abortion-causing drugs.

For those who may have been in the dark about why a mammoth federal government is a bad thing, this fight over religious freedom should make it obvious. The arguments against big government often come down to taxes, but the fact is that an outsized federal government and secure personal liberty are mutually exclusive concepts. That may be coincidental or it may be by design. Either way, the outcome is the same.

Today, it’s Christians making all the noise. But why can’t Obama’s supporters understand that one day, it will be their liberties that are infringed by this mandate or that one? One day it will be the freedoms they hold most dear that wind up sacrificed to satisfy some special interest group that happens to have the wind blowing in their favor. Will they finally get it? Will they finally stand up to this creeping oppression? Or will they just shrug, smile, and say, well, it’s for the greater good?

Time will tell, apparently. In the meantime, the wall separating our freedoms from the iron hand of government is growing thinner by the day.