Can Religious Freedom in America Survive?

Since 1791, when the Bill of Rights was formally adopted, America has enjoyed the legal protection of religious freedom, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Today, 221 years later, centuries of progress in the protection of religious and other liberties is at risk of being rolled back in one fell swoop. The culprit: Obamacare.

As we all know, President Obama’s health care law will mandate that religious hospitals, charities, and schools abandon the tenets of their faiths and provide their employees insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization. This anti-conscience mandate is but the latest assault on liberty Obamacare has ushered in. Its shock waves are reverberating across the country, waking Americans to the fact that our first freedom — religious liberty — will be the first to fall now that the federal government has unfettered control over the country’s health care system...

(Mike Brownfield, "Two Centuries of Religious Freedom Rolled Back," The Foundry, Heritage Foundation, March 1)

Brownfield's article is a good one and deserves to be read in full. You'll find that it makes a superb prelude to the Vital Signs Blog post about conscience protection which immediately follows.