Pregnancy, Religion and Medicine

If there were a Muslim group in our legislature that was attempting to pass a law requiring women to become pregnant and carry their pregnancies to term (there is not), we would be outraged.  If Catholic bishops were trying to pass a law here in South Carolina requiring that birth control be banned and a woman have sex for procreation whenever her husband demanded, there would be fury.

And yet our legislature is entertaining "testimony" that would require that pregnant women and their physicians follow radical evangelical Christian rule rather than science and medicine.  Laws are being proposed that would ban some birth control and in vitro fertilization.  The definitions of scientific terms are being challenged in order to enact these laws.  Testimony has frequently been reading of the Bible.

It is disrespectful to all religions to force compliance through legislation.  It is wrong to say that God created us in His image, and then deny us our ability to use our minds and the individual wills we possess to determine the paths of our lives.

At a time when our legislators have been attempting to frighten us into rejecting the Affordable Care Act by falsely claiming that it would impose government into our medical decisions, the bills that are being proposed in the weeks to come will do no less than create laws that will restrict our rights to get the best medical care from our trusted physicians.  It will put physicians in the position of having to report our private medical data to the government in order to control our medical decisions.

So we need to let our legislators know that our religious beliefs belong in our home and in our houses of worship, and not in our Statehouse.  If God gave us intelligence, we have the right to demand the freedom to exercise it without government control.