The “Right to Be Insured” Trumps Religious Liberty?
Religion & Liberty Online

The “Right to Be Insured” Trumps Religious Liberty?

New York pundit Al Sharpton and California Senator Barbara Boxer agree: The “right” to insurance paid for by an employer trumps freedom of conscience and religion.

Senator Boxer warned yesterday that if the HHS contraception mandate was repealed it would set a dangerous precedence of religious rights trumping the right to be insured.

On MSNBC’s Politics Nation with Al Sharpton last night, Boxer affirmed that under the proposed amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt, an employer would not be forced by the government to pay for medical practices against his religion.

“I mean, are they serious? Sharpton exclaimed, “How do you make a law where an employer can decide his own religious beliefs violate your right to be insured?”

“Oh Absolutely,” Boxer said, “Let’s use an example, let’s say somebody believes that medicine doesn’t cure anybody of a disease but prayer does and then they decide no medicine.

“No medicine!” she exclaimed, “Under the Blunt amendment, they could do just that.”

I think I may have an out-of-date copy of the U.S. Constitution because mine doesn’t include the “right to be insured.” Has there been an update to the document that I missed? Did someone slip in a new amendment when I wasn’t looking?

(Via: Outside the Beltway)

Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).