| The legislature is going back into session today! Liberals are hard at work to confuse Kansans about religious freedom. They are using several confusing and inaccurate arguments to try to influence legislators about what religious freedom means. First, they are trying to say that bolstering our religious freedom laws somehow undercuts religious freedom. They claim that this is a violation of the “separation between church and state.” This phrase has been abused horribly by groups who actually want to minimize and isolate anyone who holds sincere religious convictions. They want employers and the government to investigate people’s beliefs and place limits on what a person can believe. If we allow that to happen the government would actually be guilty of establishing religion – something the Constitution is pretty clear is a no-no – what they claim they are trying to avoid. In fact, the bills being considered by the House and Senate safeguard the real meaning of the separation between church and state and keeps the government from establishing religious beliefs. The U.S. Supreme Court, federal regulations, and our state statutes recognize that it is not the government’s role to define religious beliefs – only to recognize them. The bill being considered by the legislature is a consistent and common-sense response to the broad overreach by the Biden Administration. |
| Secondly, they want you to believe that advocates for bodily integrity from the vaccine also have to also agree with an unlimited right to abortion. This is a complete misuse and misunderstanding of the long standing, well documented legal right to bodily integrity. The right to bodily integrity was a right to be free from something (i.e. free from an unwanted touch like being hit, etc.) but it is not a positive right to demand anything (i.e. an abortion). In the case in which the Kansas Supreme Court created a new and unlimited right to abortion in the Kansas Constitution, the Court based the right in a warped understanding of the natural right to bodily autonomy. The Court then concluded that this meant there was also a right to abortion. They misused the writings of western legal thinkers to say that a right to bodily autonomy must somehow also include a right to abortion. But the Court ignored the scope of the writings of these legal thinkers who consistently denounced abortion and supported the God-given right to life while also supporting the right to be free from an unwanted touch. It is completely consistent to support the God-given natural right to bodily integrity and the right to life. Opponents of our God-given liberties are trying to revive these horrible arguments to confuse your legislators. Would you reach out to your state legislators today and let them know to support R.S. 2356? You can find them easily on our action center! For religious freedom, |
Brittany Jones, Esq.
