Little Sisters, Big Stakes

When the government demands that the Little Sisters of the Poor bend the knee to a mandate that they provide free abortifacients and contraceptives, you can add this to the list of low moments in our nation’s religious-liberty history: Baptist preachers flogged and jailed in 1770s Virginia for singing hymns in public or preaching without a state license; Governor Lilburn Boggs’s 1838 directive that state police drive Mormons from Missouri or “exterminate” them; General Ulysses S. Grant’s 1862 order expelling Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi for alleged war profiteering; the passage of Blaine Amendments in most state constitutions, to bar “sectarian” Catholic schools from government support; and Oregon’s 1922 statute that effectively banned Catholic and other private schools. The contraceptive-abortifacient mandate. How did we get here? During the Affordable Care Act (ACA) debates, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.) proposed an amendment that required employers offering health coverage to provide, at no cost to the employee, “women[’s] preventive care.” Mikulski said the amendment was about “guarantee[ing] women access to . . . critical preventive services . . . to combat their No. 1 killers.” She gave examples including screening for cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. When rumors arose that the mandate for women’s preventive care might include abortion, she took the Senate floor: Alert, alert, alert. We have just been informed that a shrill advocacy group is spreading lies about this amendment. They are saying that because it is prevention, it includes abortion services. There are no abortion services included in the Mikulski amendment. It is screening for diseases that are the biggest killers for women — the silent killers of women. It also provides family planning — but family planning as recognized by other acts. [Emphasis added.] The Mikulski amendment passed.

Thank you for referencing that article Morgana. As usual, please bear in mind that the following critique is directed at the article and not at you.

Patriots, beware of using modern misunderstanding of constitutionally enumerated religious protections to interpret historical state actions concerning religious expression.

Baptist preachers flogged and jailed in 1770s Virginia for singing hymns in public or preaching without a state license;
"Governor Lilburn Boggs’s 1838 directive that state police drive Mormons from Missouri or “exterminate” them;"

Regarding the two items above, the colonies not only had unchecked state power to address religious issues before the Constitution was ratified, but also consider this. Since the Founding States had decided that only the federal government, not the states, was obligated to respect rights expressly protected by the Bill of Rights (BoR), the states had constitutionally unchecked power to continue to address religious issues until the 14th Amendment was ratified.

General Ulysses S. Grant’s 1862 order expelling Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi for alleged war profiteering;

Regarding Grant’s order, in today’s terms, Grant had a war to fight and evidently regarded the Jews as a security threat, such a threat at least conceptually comparable to today’s problems with undocumented Muslim refugees.

In fact, Thomas Jefferson had noted that if the government has to choose between winning a war and respecting religious freedoms, then you better win the war.

"Whatsoever is lawful in the Commonwealth or permitted to the subject in the ordinary way cannot be forbidden to him for religious uses; and whatsoever is prejudicial to the Commonwealth in their ordinary uses and, therefore, prohibited by the laws, ought not to be permitted to churches in their sacred rites. For instance, it is unlawful in the ordinary course of things or in a private house to murder a child; it should not be permitted any sect then to sacrifice children. It is ordinarily lawful (or temporarily lawful) to kill calves or lambs; they may, therefore, be religiously sacrificed. But if the good of the State required a temporary suspension of killing lambs, as during a siege, sacrifices of them may then be rightfully suspended also. This is the true extent of toleration." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776.

the passage of Blaine Amendments in most state constitutions, to bar “sectarian” Catholic schools from government support;
and Oregon’s 1922 statute that effectively banned Catholic and other private schools.

As with the first two issues, the states could get away with doing such things until the 14th Amendment was ratified. The Supreme Court appropriately decided against Oregon imo. Maybe the state Blaine Amendments are still in effect.

Also, noting that the state Blaine Amendments issue is a tax-related issue, note that Thomas Jefferson’s Bill for Religious freedom, which was made into law in Virginia, essentially condemns the actions of the Blaine Amendment states imo.

Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

Insights, corrections welcome.

Regarding the Little Sisters, they need to get themselves up to speed with the following material quickly, this material from related threads.

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With all due respect to Justice Sotomayer and her misguided comments about the Little Sisters, please consider the following.

It doesn’t surprise me that she got her law school indoctrination at an Ivy League school. Whatever the Ivy League law schools are teaching about the Constitution, it is evidently not the federal government’s constitutionally limited powers as the Founding States had intended for those powers to be understood.

Justice Sotomayer's misguided question as to why the federal government cannot make people do things if they believe that it will damn them to hell completely overlooks that states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for INTRAstate healthcare purposes. This is evidenced by the following excerpts from Supreme Court case opinions decided by previous generations of state sovereignty-respecting justices. I wouldn’t be suprised if Sotomayer and her colleagues have never seen these excerpts.

With respect to the constitutionality of the Obamacare insurance mandate for example, note the fourth entry in the list below from Paul v. Virginia. In that case, state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified that regulating insurance is not within the scope of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers (1.8.3), regardless if the parties negotiating the insurance policy are domiciled in different states.

”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. [emphases added]” - Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” - Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”Inspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description [emphasis added], as well as laws for regulating the internal commerce of a state and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c., are component parts of this mass.” -Justice Barbour, New York v. Miln., 1837.
” 4. The issuing of a policy of insurance is not a transaction of commerce within the meaning of the latter of the two clauses, even though the parties be domiciled in different States, but is a simple contract [emphasis added] of indemnity against loss.” - Paul v. Virginia, 1869. (The corrupt feds have no Commerce Clause (1.8.3) power to regulate insurance.)
”Direct control of medical practice in the states is obviously [emphases added] beyond the power of Congress.” - Linder v. United States, 1925.
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]. ...” —United States v. Butler, 1936.

Remember in November !

When patriots elect Trump, Cruz, or whatever conservative they elect, they also need to elect a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will not only work within its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers to support the president, but also protect the states from unconstitutional federal government overreach as evidenced by unconstitutional federal healthcare programs, Obama’s and possibly Trump's.

Also, consider that such a Congress would probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices who are clueless about the fed’s constitutionally limited powers.

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