This is a topic I’ve covered far too often since Joe Biden was installed in the White House two years ago. My defense is that I am only chronicling a long train of abuses committed by Joe Biden and his fellow progressives. They have far too frequently obliterated the First Amendment protections guaranteed to each and every American.
The latest installment in this horror show of abuses is aimed at doctors and other members of the medical profession. Joe Biden issued an executive order forcing all members of the medical profession to perform abortions, sterilizations, and sex change operations, even if these operations violate the religious beliefs of the medical workers
The Biden administration will withdraw a Trump administration rule that would have allowed any healthcare worker to refuse to participate in abortions, sterilizations, or sex-change operations for reasons of conscience.
Healthcare workers will still be allowed to opt out of abortions and sterilizations unless doing so would cause “undue hardship to their employer, ” the San Francisco Chronicle notes, under an existing 1973 federal law.
And a recent judicial order barring a Biden administration mandate on transgender surgeries in a Catholic hospital remains in effect (even though the judge confined the effect of the ruling to the parties in the case).
However, they would not be able to opt out at will, and might not be able to apply that law to so-called “gender-affirming care,” the administration’s euphemism for surgery or drugs that mimic opposite sex characteristics and that fall short of formal sterilization (such as the removal of breasts as a treatment of gender dysphoria).
The federal government forcing anyone to violate their religious beliefs is a direct violation of the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment. The original 1973 law, which is now back in effect thanks to Biden’s executive order, did not go far enough because there is no “undue hardship” exception to the First Amendment.
As you can see from this next quote, President Trump understood the First Amendment far better than progressives because his rule was instep with the original understanding of the Free Exercise od Religion Clause.
The Trump-era rule, as described in 2018 in the Federal Register, aimed ” to ensure vigorous enforcement of Federal conscience and anti-discrimination laws” within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): “The final rule also encourages the recipients of HHS funds to provide notice to individuals and entities about their right to be free from coercion or discrimination on account of religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
The right of conscience is absolutely integral the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment. That is not just my opinion. It is a well-established fact, as you can see from this quote from the transcript of the debates in the House of Representatives when the Amendments to the Constitution that became the Bill of Rights were debated. The designation for that particular session is 5, 17 , 20 Aug. 1789Annals 1:729–31, 755, 76
Mr. [Daniel] Carroll.–As the rights of conscience are, in their nature, of peculiar delicacy, and will little bear the gentlest touch of governmental hand; and as many sects have concurred in opinion that they are not well secured under the present constitution, he said he was much in favor of adopting the words. He thought it would tend more towards conciliating the minds of the people to the Government than almost any other amendment he had heard proposed. He would not contend with gentlemen about the phraseology, his object was to secure the substance in such a manner as to satisfy the wishes of the honest part of the community.
Mr. Madison said, he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience. Whether the words are necessary or not, he did not mean to say, but they had been required by some of the State Conventions, who seemed to entertain an opinion that under the clause of the Constitution, which gave power to Congress to make all laws necessary and proper to carry into execution the Constitution, and the laws made under it, enabled them to make laws of such a nature as might infringe the rights of conscience and establish a national religion; to prevent these effects he presumed the amendment was intended, and he thought it as well expressed as the nature of the language would admit.
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