Monday, July 1, 2013

My Testimony Today on S-298


S-298 is a Trojan horse. At first glance it's about a license plate. It gives the appearance of cooperation between the state and the community. But the community initiative is not an uncontroversial one. It supports a message with an authoritarian subtext: that any motorist bearing the plate is entitled to weigh in on a woman's private reproductive decisions. The state will be lending its imprimatur to the message that women are incompetent moral agents.

The funding would support yet another such message, simultaneously creating an undue delay and unreasonable barrier for women making a difficult, time-sensitive decision. Lawmakers who think that this contemptible measure will slip through unnoticed because of the subterfuge will soon find that they have underestimated their constituents.

This measure is an outrageous abuse of state power to support religious interests. It clearly violates the spirit, if not the letter of the establishment clause. It is contrary to the state's interests to impose the will of those who would place religious law above civil law. Justice delayed is justice denied. Reproductive freedom is justice.

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