Roy Blunt: “That is a good point. I wish also to say that this is not about just about one set of religious beliefs. The current…”

“That is a good point. I wish also to say that this is not about just about one set of religious beliefs. The current discussion is about specific items in a health care plan, but there are lots of faith-based groups with different views of how you deliver health services that have been working on these issues for some time now, and I met with a lot of these groups. This is an issue of conscience, whether it is the Catholic Church, the Christian Science Church, the Seventh Day Adventist Church, the Baptist Church that I am a member of. There may be different views of this, but the views are not views that can be put forth by the government, and that becomes the government view. There was a recent Supreme Court case, Hosanna Tabor Lutheran Evangelical Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where the Court voted 9 to 0 that faith-based institutions have privileges that others do not have because that is what makes them faith-based institutions. The hiring decisions, the firing decisions, the workplace decisions are different because if they are not different, it is just another school or another hospital that might happen to have a theology department or might happen to have a chapel once a week. That is what it is. Senator Ayotte, Senator Rubio, and I have worked on various ways to approach this. We offered a bill some weeks ago on these issues of conscience that would create a respect for rights of conscience.…”