A controversy is raging here in Connecticut and elsewhere in the nation over proposed passage of laws that would compel church-supported hospitals to dispense abortion drugs, using the state's taxing power to bludgeon compliance.

Mandating that all hospitals dispense emergency contraceptives to rape victims is, in effect, to force everyone to accept the atheistic, secular, and materialistic religious precepts of liberal-progressivism.

The TV series "Boston Legal" recently devoted an episode to supporting such laws, advancing the legal theory that a Catholic hospital refusing to administer abortion drugs would be fair game for billion-dollar punitive damage actions by the tort bar's thugs, even if the hospital told the rape victim where she could go to receive abortion drugs.

In short, following one's conscience is against the law in Big Brother's hate-crime, thought-control world.

One of the very few sensible things that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote is that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Hospitals receiving state financial aid, directly or as reimbursements for care of poor patients, would have a gun at their heads: do as the liberal secularists demand, or we pull the trigger.

Even the arch-liberal Hartford Courant editorialized recently about a proposed Connecticut law requiring contraception:

"Had Plan B been approved for sale without prescription, the state might not be opening the can of worms now being discussed in the General Assembly. A bill is being proposed [that] would require all Connecticut hospitals that receive public funds to dispense emergency contraceptives to rape victims they treat. The mandate would include Roman Catholic hospitals, including St. Francis in Hartford.

"It is neither necessary nor fair to force these church-based institutions to go against their fundamental beliefs. In 80 percent of Connecticut hospitals, a woman will be offered emergency contraception, according to rape crisis experts. The Catholic hospitals say it is their policy to inform rape victims where they can receive emergency contraception."

One can look at the issue from several points of view.

Liberal secularists say that Roe v. Wade forces everyone to kow-tow to a woman's putative Constitutional right to have an abortion. No hospital therefore can refuse to provide abortions and abortion medications.

Standing aside from religious views, one can ask why must every medical center perform every medical procedure in the entire arsenal of modern medicine? Obviously a dying heart attack victim has no right to demand that any hospital he is taken to be prepared to give him a heart transplant. Not every hospital performs every sort of surgery or provides all varieties of therapy.

Liberal secularists say that a rape victim is a special case, because emergency contraceptives won't work if not administered shortly after the trauma. Wouldn't it be equally effective, and far less totalitarian, to instruct all police departments and emergency medical units not to take rape victims to Catholic hospitals? However deplorable the effect of rape on a victim, she hasn't the same degree of emergency need as a gunshot victim. Even if extra time were needed to convey her to a secular hospital, she could still get her abortion drugs within the necessary time window.

If that were the procedure, the issue of a rape victim's rights would not arise.

From the historical perspective, liberal secularists are in an analogous position to immigrant groups like Muslims who demand that their host countries conform to their preferences by abandoning centuries of law, tradition, and language.

The world's first community organizations to provide health care and financial assistance for the poor were in the Christian churches founded in Asia Minor by St. Paul. By the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, the Roman Catholic Church's hospitals were the only available sources of medical care for the general public.

Catholic hospitals are following the same religious tenets to which they have subscribed for centuries. Johnny-come-lately liberal secularists are marching in, wielding the bludgeon of state tax power, demanding that their religious beliefs supplant those of Christianity.

Because practical alternatives exist, enactment of laws mandating that Catholic hospitals dispense abortion drugs is nothing less than a declaration that Christianity is not acceptable in the hedonistic, atheistic, secular political state.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776 (www.thomasbrewton.com)

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