As oral arguments begin in Hobby Lobby’s challenge to the HHS abortifacient mandate, we might ask what the Founders would think about this case? On one hand, they could not have imagined it. The public sale of government-approved contraceptives and abortifacients (and to be fair, that of most modern medicines of any kind) would have been unfathomable in 1776. And the notion of a government requiring businesses to provide contraceptive and abortifacient coverage? Such an idea could never have occurred to them.
But part of the debate would have struck them as quite familiar: the concept that certain laws might require exemptions for those who objected on religious grounds. For the Founders, the most common cases of such exemptions involved Quakers. The Quakers were one of the most radical groups emerging from the English Reformation, and in the 1680s they founded Pennsylvania. Quakers were pacifists and refused military service. They also objected to the swearing of oaths, a common practice in courts and in the seating of political officials.
Read Full Article »