How Would Hobby Lobby Fly In Europe?

Bruce Clark provides some perspective:

In many European countries, exceptions on grounds of conscience have been regarded as a political necessity whenever legislation on touchstone moral issues has been liberalized. In Ireland, where conservative Catholic sentiment remains strong even now, the legal sale of contraceptives faced huge hurdles when it was introduced in 1979; and it was duly agreed that anybody who was asked to be involved at any stage in the sale or distribution of such items could avoid that duty on religious grounds. Britain’s pharmacists were allowed by their self-regulatory agency to opt out of selling the morning-after pill; this is controversial. …

The really unusual thing about the Obamacare case, from a European perspective, is the fact that corporations, rather than individual believers or health workers, are seeking a conscience-based opt out. First, the very idea that private firms have a wide margin of discretion over their employees’ health-care arrangements is relatively unfamiliar to some Europeans, accustomed to free medical care or compulsory insurance. And in Europe’s comparatively secular societies, the idea of corporations taking a conservative stance on touchstone ethical issues is harder to conceive—if only because being “branded” as religious might alienate quite a lot of godless consumers.