Some excerpts:
“However the argument is dressed, an argument that pleads for a special release for the religious turns into a plea merely for an “exception” to the laws imposed on everyone else. But the Catholic position on abortion has never depended on “beliefs” or appeals to faith. It has been a combination of embryology (the facts of science) woven with principled reasoning. And so Bishop William Lori, speaking for the Catholic bishops, did not seek an exemption for Catholics from the mandates on abortion. He insisted that a law compelling people to support abortions was an “unjust law,” rightly binding on no one.”
“What was engaged were the deep principles of a regime of law, and Judges Brown and Sykes were bringing them to the aid of the religious. But it should be evident that the protections springing from those principles would not be confined to the religious.”
“The truth that seems to be missed, then, in the run of our cases is that “strict scrutiny” reflects the standard that should be in place for any restrictions of freedom, not merely restrictions on the religious, for it reflects the classic understanding of the connection between the “logic of morals” and the “logic of law”: When we move to a moral judgment, we move away from statements of merely subjective taste or private belief. We begin to speak about the things that are right or wrong, just or unjust, for others as well as ourselves.”
Read the whole piece here.