Subsidizing the Culture of Death

After this week's arguments over the constitutionality of ObamaCare, many more Americans understand why forcing Americans to buy health insurance seems to be a significant violation of Congress' enumerated powers. What's been less noted, as Mary Harned points out in the Washington Times, is that millions of Americans will end up subsidizing abortion, even if it violates their religious convictions.

Giving employees -- Americans -- no realistic alternative to paying an abortion premium is a violation of their First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion. And it only highlights what a freedom-killer ObamaCare really is. That's the problem with the erosion of freedom . . . at first, it may seem relatively innocuous; ultimately, citizens realize they are nothing more than the subjects of a bossy, intrusive federal government and self-government has become little more than an abstraction.

And a word of warning for liberals: If the reasoning they champion for upholding the mandate to buy health insurance stands, they'd really better pray that Roe v. Wade is never overturned. Otherwise, pro-lifers will use their own arguments against them to insist, for example, that federal legislation outlawing abortion is perfectly permissible as a way of ensuring that there is a sufficiently large population to fund Social Security in the future.

See how the erosion of freedom works? Live by the sword of big federal government, die by the same sword.