Yup

A reader writes the following astute note:

I’ve been thinking about the mandate all week and I’m confused by something. How did we get to a point where contraception equaled an essential medical service to provide? And moreover that contraception was a limitless right higher than most other legal rights Americans have?

We live in a nation of laws that generally impose rights and duties. We often prioritize them but even the rights we hold dearest have limits. There is the age old example of the right of free speech being limited by the inability to shout “Fire” in a crowded theater. I imagine a religion holding ritual human sacrifice as a central tenet would have a hard time finding cover under freedom of religion. And our freedom of press is limited by libel and slander.

But reproductive rights? They are the only rights where there are no limits. Suggest limiting abortions to legal adults? You hate women. Suggest that parents, who have to fill out forms in triplicate to get their minor children’s ears pierced or allow the school nurse to give them a Tylenol, also be notified if their minor child receives the invasive medical procedure that an abortion is? You hate women, and worse young women. Suggest that pharmacies – privately owned businesses – ought to decide whether or not they carry contraception? You hate women. How the hell did we get to a place where reproductive freedom is the only limitless freedom?

And moreover how did we get to hold this right as the cardinal one? The right that outweighs all others, including freedom of religion? And in the case of contraception, which again is not a medical necessity like chemotherapy or antibiotics which are courses of treatment for disease, but is instead a voluntarily chosen drug to be used to engage in voluntary sexual activity, how is this voluntary course of action a sacrosanct right? Especially when necessary things like food and housing aren’t?

I am beyond baffled, especially as it is clear to me that I can’t engage this issue with my liberal friends as they move immediately from “Well contraception is a right” to “Why does your Church hate women?” within somuch as a blink and I’ve yet to read any real legal chops on the subject that don’t do the same.

It is always a mistake to expect sin to make sense. Evil is, at the end of the day, a mystery. It has a bizarre “logic” to it in that, once you embrace the insane premise, your actions will proceed from that into the depths of stupidity and, depending in your pride, you can stay on that stupid course till perdition. But the underlying premise is always fundamentally mad because sin sets itself against Reality Himself. Sin can be rebuked or forgiven, but it can never make sense.