Joe Carter included this in his “First Links” this morning, but I wanted to call readers’ attention again to the fine essay at Public Discourse today by Helen Alvaré, Gerard V. Bradley, and O. Carter Snead, “Conscience, Coercion, and Healthcare.”  It concerns the unprecedented mandate of the Obama administration, that all private health insurers must cover contraceptives, including those that are abortifacients, and this without any meaningful exemption honoring the freedom of religious conscience of countless faithful people and the institutions in which they work.  The authors are members (and Alvaré is the chair) of the Task Force on Conscience Protection at the Witherspoon Institute, where I work.

Thomas Farr, the chair of our other Task Force, on International Religious Freedom, was the author of Friday’s Public Discourse essay, “Preventing Another Attack: International Religious Freedom,” which rightly places this concern at the center of American foreign policy.  This is not a place, alas, where the Obama administration locates it, as Tom notes.

Both essays are must-reads, in my humble opinion.