Reply #35: Here's why I think those provisions were put in there

[customerserviceguy]

Abortion has been a Federal right for nearly forty years now, and while there are attempts to chip away at the edges of it, there have been no serious frontal attacks that have gotten very far up the Federal court chain.

However, the new battleground over abortion is over who is allowed NOT to participate in it. When religious-based hospitals that have thrived for many, many decades get threatened with losing state and Federal funds if they refuse to go against their convictions, and when pharmacists lose licenses and jobs because of their beliefs, we see the type of religious exemption law that is part of the NY equal marriage bill.

These provisions are what would have been adopted if abortion law had evolved through the state legislatures, rather than just being mandated into law by the Supreme Court in 1973. If we want to avoid fighting over marriage equality for another four decades, then seeing it come from legislative action and citizen initiative will work better than court decisions, as we saw in Maine.

I love bacon, but I don't want to force the local halal and kosher butcher shops into providing it for me.