Compromise gives everyone a win
Most people misunderstand the separation of church and state clause. It is not freedom of religion, it is freedom from religion. John Adams opined that if religious zealots were not restrained by legal measures, they would “whip and crop, and pillory and roast.”
The birth control compromise protects us from having someone else inflicting their religious beliefs upon us. We are America, not Afghanistan. So many Republicans are passing silly laws outlawing Sharia law, while at the same time passing its Christian cultural equivalent by telling women they have no right over their own bodies.
Everybody is a winner here. No religious institution is being forced to pay for contraception. Insurance companies are on record as stating they would rather pay for contraception than the costs associated with an unwanted child. No woman is force bow to third-party morality.
The only losers are the Christian Taliban who want to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.
In the words of a Founding Father, U.S. Constitution author and fourth president, James Madison, “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”
John Morgan
Arlington Heights