In case you have been living in a bubble the past few years, let me explain this cartoon for you. Obamacare has a provision which mandates that all employers, regardless of their religious objections, provide their employees with abortive and contraceptive care services.

To me, it was quite obvious what an obtrusion of religious freedom this mandate really was. In my narrow world-view, I could not conceive how anybody could choose the side of anti-freedom in this debate.

Then the attacks came and I quickly learned that those in favor of the mandate, through some twisted logic, labeled the mandate as being for freedom, and the churches as being against freedom. And in typical liberal fashion, it did not stop there. Many liberals then went on to conclude that because churches were against this mandate, they must somehow also be against women in general. Thus, conservatives must also want to deny women voting rights, working rights, fair pay, all the way down the line!

I remember a heated debate I had with a liberal friend. What was frustrating was that I just wished he would consider where I was coming from, even for a moment. A church is protected, by the Constitution, with their own freedoms. A church should be allowed to have a conscientious objection to covering abortive care, if it violates their tenants. But according to this man I was talking to, how dare the church push it’s views on its workers (he actually used the word ‘dare’).

I gently tried to explain to him, that the worker voluntarily chooses to work for the church, knowing their stance on these issues. If the worker does not like the church’s position, GET ANOTHER JOB! Nobody is forcing that worker to stay there. If the worker feels like they are being proselytized while at their church job, guess what, it’s the church’s building, the church’s payroll, the church’s right to believe and preach whatever they want. Freedom is allowing the church to have these positions, even if they are contrary to your own. If you don’t like it, too bad. That’s the consequence of a free society.

According to my friend, the church, by not refusing to pay for this lady’s contraceptives, is denying her access to care. Huh? The church is not stopping her from getting whatever contraceptive stuff she wants. If she wants it, she can pay for it. (And that goes for a lot of things by the way, from food, to vacations, to BMWs). If the church followed her to Walgreens and told the clerk not to sell this woman contraceptives, then yes, that would be a problem. But that’s not what is happening here. And again, I stress, if the woman wishes for somebody else to pay for these services, find another job that offers it as a benefit.

And I might add, if the lady lives a life that is promiscuous, the church should have the RIGHT to fire her if it violates some sort of ethical code they might have on chastity. There’s plenty of other employers who will hire such a woman. The church should have that freedom.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let me say one other thing, and this goes back to something Joe Biden said in the VP debates. He said that while he is pro-life, he wouldn’t force his morals on other people. This is a tired, old, worn debate I’ve heard most of my life. Every time I hear it, I begin to deconstruct it logically in my mind, and it simply does not make sense. I wish that just once, somebody would throw this back at whomever uses this line in future debates, simply because it is a logical fallacy.

Let me break it down for you. First, don’t tell me liberals don’t like to push their morals on other people. Please! What do you call smoking bans? What do you call the ban on the incandescent? What do you call soda pop bans? What do you call bans on manger scenes at Christmas time? Or crosses at memorials? EVERYBODY tries to push their moral world view through politics. And it’s a good thing, too. We all agree that murder is morally objectionable. Therefore, as a consensus, we have banned murder. If we were to truly hold to the idea that it’s not up to us to push our morals on other people, then we should allow murderers to kill, because it’s not up to us to push our morals on them.

As you can see, that’s utterly preposterous. The same holds true for abortion. If deep down in the soul of your convictions, you truly felt that abortion was murder of the unborn, it would not matter what the other person felt about the issue. It’s morally objectionable to you, and you would work to try and stop it. Since abortion is the law of the land, you would have to go about your work through the legislative process, but ultimately, trying to win the hearts and minds of people to see why you find it so objectionable.

Here’s another analogy. Let’s take another issue, say, pedophilia. Let’s say we lived in a society that found sexual violation of child to be no big deal, so they legalized it. But you thought it was awful. Would you say, oh, I’m against pedophilia, but I’m not going to push my morals on other people? Of course not! You would say that this is a horrible act and you are going to work to ban it!

The same holds true for abortion. To say that you’re against abortion, but you’re not going to push your views on other people tells me that you really are not against abortion at all! If you found it to be the despicable act that I see it to be, then you would work just as hard to stop it as I try to do.

Abortion is an extremely divisive issue and it does not lend itself to much humor. I apologize for the length of this column, but if you are still interested in reading more, I implore you to read an excellent article on this topic written by a friend, PA Ritzer. His article can be found here.