To The Editor:

I appreciate the compassion Ross Douthat expresses and likewise his unmasking the duplicity of Republican state legislators invoking a policy “without having to compromise their libertarian principles to make it real.” But his description of a “weakened religious right” with “few media megaphones” belies a core impatience with dissent and the founding principle of the separation of church and state.

Over the last 40 years, the Republican Party has succeeded in packing the judiciary not so much with “conservatives” as with Christian plutocrats, and the struggle that Mr. Douthat articulates highlights one area where our country may witness the true gift that has been packed for us.

Prepare for the right of wealth maximization to supersede not just the right to life but the right to seek a living. Increasingly, women will lose agency over their bodies, and the value of the labor of most people will be reduced to little more than bare sustenance.
Charles Olson
New York