The Freedom From Religion Foundation is delighted to announce that the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission has unanimously voted to support the proposal for a memorial to Thomas Paine in Washington, D.C. Today’s vote was a critical step to get the Department of the Interior and related agencies to support the bill.

While HR 6720, introduced by Rep. Jamie Raskin, to authorize construction of a memorial to Thomas Paine, must still pass Congress and clear other hurdles, the support from the advisory commission is a shot in the arm for the project.

During the hearing, Raskin gave a master class to the commission on why Paine is a figure of great historical significance to the United States and to the American people. FFRF Governmental Affairs Director Mark Dann, representing the Thomas Paine Memorial Association, thanked Chair Peter May and members of the advisory commission for scheduling the hearing.

Margaret Downey, president of the Thomas Paine Memorial Association, told the commission, “A Thomas Paine memorial highlighting his life and work may very well help heal divides in this country under the banner of true American liberty.”

Identifying herself as both an FFRF legal fellow and a registered Republican in Wisconsin, Karen Heineman said that as a conservative, she regards a decision to place a monument of this patriot not as a “revolutionary” decision, but “an action long overdue.”

Mandisa Thomas, founder of Black Nonbelievers, spoke passionately about Paine’s anti-slavery stance, noting that he was a founding member of America’s first abolitionist group. “Thomas Paine should be memorialized, not only as a pioneering Founding Father, but also as a pioneering anti-slavery activist who made an indelible mark on America’s social and political landscape,” she added.

Charis Hoard, of Ohio, who just graduated with a Master’s degree, represented the Generation Z perspective. “Celebrating Paine’s legacy with a memorial consecrates America’s fight to continuously improve itself and bring about a brighter future for all,” said Hoard.

Gene Jones, with a Florida veterans group, testified, “As veterans, we say Paine conceived of the American idea and he kept it alive at its lowest ebb. spoke about Paine, one of the nation’s first veterans, from a veterans perspective.”

The advisory commission members include: director of National Park Service (chairman), the chair of the National Capital Planning Commission, the architect of the Capitol, the chair of the American Battle Monuments Commission, the chair of the Commission of Fine Arts, the mayor of the District of Columbia, the administrator of the General Services Administration and the secretary of the Department of Defense, or delegated staff.

One of the commission members mentioned being surprised to learn there is not already a memorial to Paine in the nation’s capital.

Dann notes, “With this support, we can go back to the Natural Resources Committee and ask the chair to call for a markup.” He says that the Paine association can also start meeting with Senate offices that may have an interest in helping get the bill through the Senate.

Dann thanked Beth Porter, who is a legislative affairs specialist, National Capital Region secretary, National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission, and her team, who have been so generous with their time.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 37,000 largely nonreligious members across the country, including members in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia. FFRF works to protect the constitutional separation between state and church and to educate about nontheism.

The Biden administration must act boldly to protect reproductive rights, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging.

Although the president’s executive order on July 8 did take some important measures on this front, much more needs to be done, FFRF advises. Extremist anti-abortion legislators around the country are clamping down on reproductive rights in new and terrifying ways now that they know the U.S. Supreme Court will not stop them. At least eight states already ban abortion and up to half the states are expected to do so imminently.

“Criminalizing abortion health care and access to abortion information is creating a national health emergency,” FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Anne Laurie Gaylor write to Biden. “The administration should act accordingly.”

Specifically, FFRF is asking that the president:

• Immediately create a health ombudsperson at the Department of Health and Human Services with clear authority.
• Clarify his protections on sensitive health and location data that could be used against women ordering pills online or crossing state borders for abortion care.
• Provide federal resources for individuals seeking abortion care in other states, which could include travel vouchers, child care services and other needed forms of support.
• And, most importantly, order the use of federal property — VA hospitals and clinics — as oases of abortion care in states with bans or inadequate services. Utilizing the more than 150 VA medical centers and over 1,400 community-based outpatient clinics would ensure federal citizens and residents in all states would have access to abortion care.

These are starting steps toward ensuring that abortion care — the right to terminate unwanted pregnancies — is a federally protected right. Americans need to know that their federal government is doing absolutely everything in its power to protect them against a coming onslaught, FFRF urges.

“We ask the administration to provide reassurances to those who may need to seek abortion care, contraception, in vitro fertilization or other forms of reproductive health care that the federal government will be there to protect these essential rights,” the letter concludes.

Read the full FFRF letter to President Biden here.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 37,000 largely nonreligious members across the country, including members in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia. FFRF works to protect the constitutional separation between state and church and to educate about nontheism.

Proposed Model Legislation

Why abortion is a state/church issue
The cherished American principle of keeping state and church separate is under serious threat from the U.S. Supreme Court and state legislative bodies around the country. The Establishment Clause, by erecting a wall of separation between church and state, enshrines freedom of conscience. The only way to protect freedom of conscience for citizens of diverse beliefs or no belief is for the government to be free from religious control. In addition to obvious state/church issues like coach-led prayers in public schools, we should protect the right of the individual to be free from religious dictation in determining if and whether to become a parent, use contraception or terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

Invading medical autonomy in the name of religion
Denominations that oppose abortion rights include Assemblies of God, the Roman Catholic Church and Southern Baptist Convention, while more liberal Protestant branches and Conservative and Reform Judaism support abortion rights. Dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor emphasized in oral arguments when hearing the Dobbs case, which ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade, that the issue of when life begins is hotly debated among religions. The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s amicus brief in the Dobbs decision points out, “Religion has always been at the heart of anti-abortion legislation.” Justice John Paul Stevens in a 1989 case noted “the absence of any secular purpose for the legislative declarations that life begins at conception.” Indeed, atheists and agnostics are overwhelmingly the most supportive of abortion rights, and Protestant evangelicals and Mormons are the most opposed.

With the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, zealous Christian nationalist state legislators have been given a green light to destroy reproductive autonomy, criminalize access to abortion care and even contraception. Anti-abortion bans undermine medical autonomy and endanger pregnant people, and are invariably justified by religious belief. Legislators must work to safeguard reproductive care not just as a matter of privacy, compassion and medical science, but also as a matter of keeping our laws secular.

Abortion bans are anti-science
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and personal decisions about abortion. However, as we live in a secular nation, health care laws should only reflect science, not religious faith or belief. The science proves that there is no basis except religion for abortion bans:

• Abortion is an extremely safe procedure, especially when conducted early in a pregnancy. Since Roe v. Wade was handed down, 90 percent of abortions happened within the first 12 weeks of gestation. Major complications occur in less than a quarter of 1 percent of procedures There are more complications from wisdom tooth removals and tonsillectomies than from abortions.
• Researchers have found that pregnant people are 14 times more likely to die during childbirth than they are from any abortion complications. Compulsory pregnancy risks the woman’s health and life.
• Studies have shown that 99 percent of individuals who obtain an abortion feel relief, not regret.
• Countries that have banned abortion prove that abortion restrictions do not reduce abortion rates. Instead, they make abortion care more dangerous. This has resulted in numerous preventable pregnancy-related deaths around the world every year.
• In Texas, maternal deaths rose from 72 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010 to 148 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2012 after abortion restrictions. A Duke University Press research journal reports that a national abortion ban could result in a 21 percent increase in pregnancy-related deaths, rising to 33 percent among Blacks who already face stark inequities and maternal death rates.
• The American Medical Association says that it will always defend science and opposes abortion bans.
• The U.N. Human Rights Commission has asserted that abortion is a human right, that denying abortion access is linked to discrimination and that it can constitute gender-based violence, torture, and/or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
• The so-called “fetal heartbeat” in so much abortion legislation is a misnomer. Dr. Ted Anderson, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an organization representing 58,000 physicians in the United States, says the phrase is intended to hide its anti-science roots. Instead, Anderson explains that the pulsing is “electrically induced flickering of a portion of the fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops.”

Abortion bans are driven by a religious minority that seeks to impose its extremist worldview on a secular nation. Since the Supreme Court extremist supermajority overturned almost 50 years of precedent protecting abortion rights, support for abortion rights, while always strong, is growing. Six in 10 Americans say abortion should be legal in most or all cases.

Model legislation to protect abortion rights

In response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, states must act urgently to ensure access to reproductive care, including abortion:

Safe harbor laws. These laws solidify abortion rights and health care access, as well as protect people who provide abortion or receive support to obtain the procedure in one state, then are sued in another state. “Safe harbor” laws date to slavery, when states, largely in the North, passed laws against the Fugitive Slave Acts to ensure that escaped enslaved people could seek refuge and that those helping them would not be penalized.

Example: CT HB 5414 (enacted in 2022) expands abortion access in Connecticut and protects individuals from outside states’ attempts to prosecute based on actions taken in Connecticut. It expands eligibility to perform abortion care to include advanced nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, and physician assistants to perform first-trimester aspiration and medication abortions. The bill protects individuals from extradition who are accused of seeking or providing reproductive health care that may be criminal in other states. No individuals involved in reproductive health care can share information related to that health care unless the patient consents in writing to the disclosure. Further, the bill prohibits state agencies and health care providers from assisting in out-of-state investigations/prosecutions of reproductive health care. Anyone who is sued in another state regarding their involvement in reproductive health services that are legal in Connecticut can recover certain costs they incurred from defending themselves.

Laws against deceptive crisis pregnancy centers. There are now more phony crisis pregnancy centers in the United States than abortion clinics. Typically run by religious agencies, they site themselves close to abortion clinics and lure in unsuspecting women by offering free ultrasounds. They are not licensed medical facilities and are preying on women by using disinformation. Unfortunately they now receive millions in state and federal tax dollars. Object to public funding and help stop the deception.

Example: CT SB 835 (enacted in 2021) prevents deceptive advertising practices by limited services pregnancy centers. No limited pregnancy center can advertise or otherwise deceive patients about their services. The attorney general can apply for injunctive relief of these centers to pay for and get rid of false advertising and correct deceptive advertising. Stopping deceptive advertising is a bipartisan issue.

Repealing state “Hyde Amendments." Congress enacted the federal Hyde Amendment in 1976, which cruelly denies abortion coverage to low-income women otherwise eligible for medical assistance, except in the rarest of exceptions. A majority of states have similarly cut off funding for abortion care for indigent and low-income women. Pro-choice legislators must keep re-introducing measures to repeal state laws barring coverage for abortion care. Illinois is a case in point, where the Republican governor in 2017, thanks to continual demands, signed a bill to lift bans on insurance coverage for low-income women enrolled in Medicaid. Some states are considering legislation to help cover costs for women fleeing states with bans. Oregon has already passed the $15 million Oregon Reproductive Health Equity Fund.

Other examples of legislation protecting abortion rights include: Ensuring reproductive freedom for pregnant inmates and emergency contraception access on public college campuses. Multiple states are introducing constitutional amendments to enshrine abortion rights.

Serious court reform is needed to protect individual liberties. Until that happens, we need voices of reason, science and compassion in state legislatures advocating for reproductive freedom.

Freedom From Religion Foundation
PO Box 750, Madison, WI 53701
608-256-8900

Proposed model legislation

Why LGBTQ rights are a state/church issue: Ancient religious bigotry making modern legislation
Homophobic and transphobic bills have become commonplace in state legislatures, ranging from legalizing anti-gay discrimination to prohibiting transgender public school students from playing sports or even from using a washroom. Most people who oppose LGBTQ equality do so because of religion, as clichés like “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” demonstrate. While 83 percent of unaffiliated accept homosexuality, only 36 percent of evangelical Protestants do, and 59 percent of those who attend weekly church services believe homosexuality should be discouraged.

One common thread linking many religious traditions is an unhealthy obsession with sexuality, including the notion that sex itself, and sexual desires, are inherently sinful unless confined to married heterosexual couples (preferably of the same race) attempting to procreate. Religious hostility toward same-sex relationships, interracial relationships and other private matters of consenting adults have tainted the law, in the United States and elsewhere, for centuries.

Without the religious perspective clouding these issues, many bills being debated today become transparently harmful and pointless. Transgender girls are not dominating K-12 sports, and boys aren’t pretending to be transgender in order to gain access to girls’ restrooms. Same-sex marriages do not affect heterosexual married couples. The real point of these bills is the same as Reconstruction-era segregation laws: deliberately “othering” people who lawmakers view as inferior based on immutable characteristics. Such laws have no place in a free society or a secular government.

Transgender athelete bans, like bathroom bills, solve nothing and cause harm.
In the past session, more than half of U.S. states considered bill banning transgender girls from competing in K-12 public school girls sports. The typical justification is that the bills are necessary to “save women’s sports,” and that without these bills transgender girls will dominate every sport due to an inherent biological advantage.

This is a lie. Just like anti-trans “bathroom” bills were never about bathrooms, transgender athlete bans are not about girls sports. The myriad anti-LGBTQ legislators who have made this a top priority have not suddenly simultaneously awakened to realize the importance of protecting female athletes. Elite athletic organizations have long considered how to fairly regulate the effect of male puberty in women’s sports, and they are the appropriate rulemakers in such circumstances. But in first-grade soccer or JV basketball, these concerns are nonexistent. Most sponsors of trans athlete bans cannot point to a single example of trans athletes dominating a sport in their state, let alone a sweeping epidemic threatening to destroy women’s sports.

The harm, however, is very real. Transgender teens have a vastly increased risk of depression, suicide and other issues that can potentially be mitigated by being part of a welcoming community, such as a sports team. The benefits of participating in sports are vast and well documented. While setting world records is a goal for a few, most student athletes play simply because they want to play, and state legislators ought to support that in their public schools, especially for kids who are at risk. These bills are harmful because they stigmatize children who are different, who are grappling with their identities. The bills may single out trans girls but they also signal government disapproval of LGBTQ children in general, trans boys and those increasingly identifying as nonbinary.

Safeguard same-sex marriage.
With the Supreme Court overturning the individual rights described in Roe v. Wade based on dubious so-called “originalist” reasoning, the door is now open for judicial activists on the high court to strip away well-established rights dating back to, and including, the rejection of the “separate but equal” principle in Brown v. Board.

The first likely target of this unjust assault on individual liberties is same-sex marriage. Obergefell v. Hodges was decided less than a decade ago, and drew a fiery dissent from Chief Justice John Roberts, who now has five other justices sitting to his ideological right. There is no reason to think that the current results-oriented court will pass on the opportunity to overturn this decision in the near future. Like Roe v. Wade, their justification will be that this should be an issue for every state to decide individually.

State legislators must anticipate this assault and safeguard same-sex marriage rights at the state level immediately. State constitutions should be amended to recognize the right of consenting adults to marry, regardless of their gender or race. Every statutory scheme involving marriage should be updated to explicitly recognize same-sex marriages so that a reversal at the federal level will not have unexpected impacts on married couples in the future.

Thirty-five states ban same-sex marriage in their constitutions, state law or both. These currently unenforceable bans must be removed immediately. Utah state Sen. Derek Kitchen is drafting a bill to codify marriage equality in Utah, and similar efforts should be advanced in every other state as well.

Conversion therapy should be banned in every state.
Less than half of U.S. states have enacted laws banning the debunked practice of “conversion therapy,” purporting to convert a minor from being gay or bisexual into being straight and almost always predicated on religious beliefs. CO HB19-1129 is an example of a bill banning conversion therapy for minors.

Some bans apply only to registered therapists, while in practice, conversion therapy is conducted by religious clergy rather than by real therapists. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (affecting states in Alabama, Georgia and Florida) reached a bizarre conclusion in 2020 that therapists have a free speech right to conduct conversion therapy despite the consensus from medical professionals that the practice is illegitimate. Creative solutions are needed to fight against conversion therapy, since existing bans have run into practical problems in some states. Outside the 11th Circuit, strong conversion therapy bans should be implemented immediately.

The protection of LGBTQ rights is only the latest battleground in the fight for human rights, self determination and dignity. State legislators who care about equal rights for all, and about standing up to religiously based bigotry influencing state legislation, must participate vigorously in this effort. We must work together to advance secular policies based on equality, compassion and evidence-based reasoning.

Freedom From Religion Foundation
PO Box 750, Madison, WI 53701
608-256-8900

State legislators who care about the constitutional principle of separation between state and church are usually on the offensive: working and voting against bills for vouchers for religious schools, against abortion bans and restrictions and against anti-LBGTQ measures.

Here are a number of proactive bills to introduce that protect individual liberties and fortify the “wall of separation.” Help put theocratic or Christian nationalist legislators on the defensive. The bills below will protect citizens from religious sway over our civil laws and social policy. The text of each bill referenced below can be easily obtained by reference to the bill numbers provided.

ABORTION

Abortion safe harbor bills. CT HB 5414 (enacted in Connecticut in 2022) expands eligibility to perform abortion care to include advanced nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, and physician assistants to perform first-trimester aspiration and medication abortions. It also protects individuals from extradition who are accused of seeking or providing reproductive health care that may be criminal in other states. It ensures that no individuals involved in reproductive health care can share information related to that health care unless the patient consents in writing to the disclosure. Further, the bill prohibits state agencies and health care providers from assisting in out-of-state investigations/prosecutions of reproductive health care. Anyone who is sued in another state regarding their involvement in reproductive health services that are legal in Connecticut can recover certain costs they incurred from defending themselves.

Preventing deceptive advertising practices by crisis pregnancy centers. CT S.B. 835 (enacted in Connecticut in 2021) is an act preventing deceptive advertising practices by limited services pregnancy centers. No limited pregnancy center can advertise or otherwise deceive patients about their services. The Attorney General can apply for injunctive relief of these centers to pay for and get rid of false advertising and correct deceptive advertising. This could muster bipartisan support.

HEALTH CARE SHARING MINISTRIES

The Affordable Care Act has a loophole permitting health care sharing ministries (HCSMs), which lack consumer protections, are largely unregulated and look like insurance but are not, preying on devout individuals. Some states have issued consumer alerts, but HCSMs need to be reined in.

One such effort is CO HB22-1269 (enacted in Colorado in 2022), which requires insurance pooling programs to submit basic operational information to the Division of Insurance (DOI) so the DOI can determine their market impact, financial viability, and truth-in-advertising. These insurance pooling programs are often misleading and do not cover health care coverage they advertise. They have all the negatives of insurance companies without any of the consumer protection.

SECULAR ALTERNATIVES TO 12-STEPS

Many nonbelievers have objections to 12-step programs predicated on giving public and personal obeisance to a “Higher Power.” Secular alternatives must exist, especially in sentencing programs, to protect freedom of conscience.

NY A.8163A (enacted in New York in 2022) provides a secular alternative to 12-step programs for inmates, requiring written notice to defendants informing them of their right to a non-religious treatment program when the court orders them to attend an alcohol or substance abuse treatment program.

PROTECT CHILDREN FROM BLASPHEMY LAWS

Laws against blasphemy are unconstitutional in the United States, but in some countries blasphemy is punishable by death. U.S. courts should never send a child to a foreign country where they risk such a punishment.

Ordinarily, states will honor foreign custody orders, sending children abroad when asked to do so by a foreign court, under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act. The UCCJEA has been adopted by every state except Massachusetts, and is used to determine which state should determine the custody of children. But it treats foreign countries as though they were other U.S. states, and other than a very narrow exception, the UCCJEA requires courts to honor these foreign orders.

States should amend their UCCJEA to allow courts to ignore foreign custody orders that would result in a possible death penalty in a foriegn jurisdiction due to laws against blasphemy, or other unjust criminal laws that shock the conscience of American liberty, such as harsh penalties for religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or political beliefs.

Washington is currently the only state to have done this, with WA HB 1042 (enacted in 2021).

PROTECT LGBTQ RIGHTS

Less than half of U.S. states have enacted laws banning the debunked practice of “conversion therapy,” purporting to convert a minor from being gay or bisexual into being straight. These are almost always predicated on religious beliefs. CO HB19-1129 (enacted in 2019) is an example of banning conversion therapy for minors.

Existing bans have run into practical problems in some states. For example, some bans apply only to registered therapists, while in practice, conversion therapy is often conducted by religious clergy rather than by licensed therapists. Additionally, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (affecting Florida, Georgia and Alabama) reached a bizarre conclusion in 2020 that therapists have a Free Speech right to conduct conversion therapy despite the consensus from medical professionals that the practice is illegitimate. Those states will require creative solutions to protect LGBTQ youth, while every state outside the 11th Circuit that has not done so already should enact strong conversion therapy bans immediately.

PERIOD EQUITY

Up to 84 percent of teens have either missed class time or know someone who has missed class time because they lacked access to menstruation hygiene products. Shaming girls for getting their periods is deeply embedded in patriarchal religious traditions.

Bills can be introduced to ensure that menstrual products are available in public restrooms (including schools and prisons) and are tax-free. DC B24-0158 (enacted in 2021) is simple, nonpartisan and offers great benefits, especially to low income constituents. It requires public high schools and universities to stock all women’s and gender neutral restrooms with a dispenser for period products—tampons, sanitary pads, or liners—at no cost to the product user, and for elementary schools to maintain at least one such restroom. These products are instrumental to the general health and welfare of the public, and prevent the spread of germs, reduce the transmission of bloodborne pathogens, and improve the general welfare.

VT S.53 (enacted in 2022) exempts menstrual products from sales tax, helping to correct an underappreciated lingering effect of the religious stigma on women. No one should miss time at class or work simply because they cannot afford these basic sanitary products.

BAN FGM

In the U.S., more than 500,000 women and girls have undergone or are at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM), whether in the U.S. or during “vacation cutting” trips to countries of origin. In 2018, a federal judge ruled that a federal ban on FGM was unconstitutional, and that state must regulate the practice themselves.

KY S.B. 72 (enacted in 2020) is a bill that made FGM a felony. It requires proper training and education regarding FGM and requires that a person reports if a child they know, or have reason to know, was victim to FGM. This is a great opportunity for bipartisan legislation that criminalizes an unambiguously harmful, disgusting practice. Religion should never be an excuse to violate neutral, generally applicable laws, and even those who push for religious exemptions to other laws understand that mutilating children’s genitals based on religious belief must be treated as criminal behavior.

VACCINES

Even before the pandemic, the drive to exempt children from vaccinations on religious grounds was growing. Boston University reports that although the United States thought it had eliminated measles in the year 2000, more than 981 cases were confirmed in 26 states in 2019. A majority of states allow a religious exemption for schoolchildren immunization requirements. FFRF’s position is that religious and philosophical objections to vaccines should not be allowed. The science should be followed so herd immunity protects children or adults who for genuine health reasons cannot be vaccinated.

CT H.B. 6423 (enacted in 2021) creates restrictions on vaccine exemptions to only accept medical exemptions for not being vaccinated. Another example is DC B23-0171 (enacted in 2021), which allows competent minors to opt into vaccinations without parental permission. Parents’ unfounded and dangerous skepticism about crucial vaccines should not allow them to jeopardize the lives of their children or their communities.

HEALTH CARE AND FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE

Creating protections against Catholic hospitals acquiring secular hospitals and eliminating access to care due to dogma is vital, not just for reproductive rights and rights for rape victims but for individuals who object to extraordinary measures when they are terminally ill or dying.

OR H.B. 2362 (enacted in 2021) requires mergers and acquisitions by health care companies to be approved by the state’s Department of Consumer and Business Services and Oregon Health Authority. There must be a board to review these mergers and acquisitions, to make sure patients are receiving adequate health care. In particular, Catholic hospitals often refuse to provide certain medical services, and allowing them to acquire other hospitals can leave geographical areas without access to those services, endangering the health and lives of those communities simply because of religious dogma.

DEATH WITH DIGNITY

Currently, only eleven jurisdictions allow terminally ill patients to die in the manner they choose, with the assistance of a physician, rather than being forced to endure a long, painful, and dehumanizing end of life experience.

NM H.B. 47 (enacted in 2021) includes many safeguards to address the common concerns about this legislation. Patients seeking this end-of-life care must pass a mental competency screening, there is a 48-hour waiting period before the medication can be taken, and more. Jurisdictions with similar laws since the 1990s have not seen the abuse that opponents always promise such laws will bring.

The only remaining objection to death with dignity or aid-in-dying laws are religiously motivated beliefs that end-of-life care encroaches on God’s jurisdiction of deciding when someone dies. Such beliefs have no place in secular legislatures, which should uniformly pass this legislation.

For more information, please go to ffrf.org/issues

Freedom From Religion Foundation
PO Box 750, Madison, WI 53701
608-256-8900