opt away

doubt it will shock you, but i really think it's the right decision to make it easier for groups with religious affiliation to opt out of contraceptive coverage. we ought, to whatever extent we can, to allow there to be sub-state groups that can determine their own values, though it is self-evident to the left that there should be no such possibilities. the state oughtn't to be the only context in which policies and hence values are decided , even if you had some sort of clean majoritarian democracy, which you most assuredly do not. it has no claim even to be the only group that exercises power over its members. or to put it in more familiar terms: there have to be conscience rights accorded to some groups and the people in them, on the pain of crushing oppression which insists that it has the right to make you violate your own deeply-held values. if you think this turns only basically on the question of whether there should be access to contraception, you're missing a lot of what is important in cases like this. in fact, religious groups are almost the only ones that can make a direct constitutional claim for that sort of status, but i'd like to see many sorts of groups with the ability to opt out of all sorts of things. your feminist collective should be able to opt out, e.g.