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The Right to Lifestyle vs. The Right to the Free Expression of Religion



Are we really watching this fight? The fight between an inalienable right granted to us by our Creator and the new "right to health insurance" granted to us by our government. Worse still, it is only being called a "right to health insurance". That is not even what this fight is about.

Instead, there is a certain political faction that is trying to trick us into thinking that birth control is health care. Not only that but, they are trying to make us believe that health care is incomplete without artificial birth control and abortion inducing drugs. What this fight actually comes down to is a fight between the inalienable right of free expression of religion and the right to methods and drugs that have existed for only about 50 or 60 years. It is a fight between a right that is truly ours as part of our very nature and a  "right" to demand that someone else pay for our lifestyle choices. Because anyway you cut it birth control is a lifestyle choice.

The other day I was running on the treadmill at the gym and I look up to the television in front of me and saw Al Sharpton interviewing Sen. Barbara Boxer on MSNBC. The part of the interview that I saw apparently was focusing on the recent HHS mandate that will require Catholic's (or anyone else for that matter) who provide health insurance to employees to cover contraception and abortion inducing drugs*. I almost fell off of the treadmill when Al asked the senator how they could pass a law that said an employers religious view trumps your right to be insured. Senator Boxer makes the argument even more incomprehensible by comparing birth control to life saving (or even life improving, life extending, etc) medicine.

When the people who are in a position with mass media to influence public opinion are so willing to make a case for the government being allowed to trample our human rights we are in for a fight. When the people we elect to government are so willing to trample our rights to push their agenda, we are in for a fight. But then again we were never promised an easy road were we?






So yes,  Al Sharpton, yes, Senator Boxer, my right to free expression of religion and yours and everyone else trumps any right you may think you have to demand that I pay for your lifestyle choices. Because there is a difference between rights we posses by our very human nature and those thought up and instilled by bureaucrats.


* If you don't already know Catholic's hold that birth control is intrinsically evil. For an very good explanation of why the Church teaches this read  Humanae Vitae. 

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