Veni Quid Veniat

     One such constant is that those who do evil are often afraid to do it alone. Even when the rest of society is content to let institutionalized evil exist, even when that evil is safe for the moment, those who partake in it seem eager - insistent, even - that the rest of society take part as well. It isn't enough that they be allowed to do as they please, others must dirty their hands, too. While one could point to many different examples, two of the more prominent can be found right here in America: the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and the HHS mandate passed four years ago.

     The first example is well-known by name, but its specifics are poorly understood. An understanding of its example, and how it applies to the battle liberty-minded Americans are fighting today, would not be amiss. The Fugitive Slave Act contained a number of provisions, but two in particular upset Abolitionists (and indeed all those who valued personal freedom). The first denied the right of those accused of being escaped slaves to trial by jury. This provoked a great deal of protest - and rightly so - but the second part is more relevant to our discussion. This required that magistrates and ordinary citizens in free states not only refrain from hiding escaped slaves, which was already illegal, but also actively work to capture and return escaped slaves. The law not only worked to prevent slaves from escaping, it attempted to force northern states into taking part in the brutal "peculiar institution" of the South.

     The free states did not receive the law with apathy. Wisconsin and Vermont both effectively nullified the law, and juries across the North refused to convict those accused of breaking the law. Going beyond simple nullification, some openly defied the law, either by passively disobeying or by actively freeing those accused of being escaped slaves or of aiding escaped slaves, sometimes through force. In fact, northern states' opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act was one of the direct causes of the Civil War - once the country elected a president who would not use federal troops to enforce the act, northern states were far more likely to be successful in nullifying the law, and southern slaveholders would have been forced to bear the guilt of their "peculiar institution" alone.

     Sixty-four years later, we face a similar situation. Not content with legalized - even, in some cases, taxpayer-funded - abortion, advocates for abortion insist that every business owner be forced to bloody his hands by providing funds to his employees specifically for the purpose of providing abortifacients (or, if he chooses an "exemption," he can pay someone else to do the exact same thing). It isn't enough that employees can already use their salary to buy abortifacients, the employer must provide compensation for that and no other purpose. Why? It isn't because of financial hardship - the abortifacients covered by the HHS mandate range from $30 to $60, and someone claiming financial hardship can get them from Planned Parenthood free of charge. Abortifacient drugs for early pregnancy are readily available and inexpensive - this, by the way, is a shameful indictment of the value our society places on life, but it is nonetheless true. No one is being prevented from using abortifacients because they can't afford them. At face value, it would appear that there is no particular reason to force employers to pay for these drugs, and yet that is exactly what the HHS mandate does. Again, why? Perhaps because "there is nothing new under the sun," and those who do evil are still afraid to do it alone. One person standing up for right is a threat to those who do wrong and a prod to their sore conscience. By forcing universal participation in their misdeeds, abortion's apologists apparently hope to wipe away every hint that abortion is a sickening affront to the dignity of humankind, just as slavery's apologists hoped to silence their consciences by silencing their opposition.