It’s easy to get caught up in the latest Herman Cain media SNAFU or Gingrich reminiscence and forget that the world is full of actual, morally depraved evil people. Consternation over deficits and unemployment has a distressing (if perhaps understandable) tendency to sweep higher moral abstracts under the rug until our checkbook ledger is back in balance. However, for whatever its political value, it is worth remembering while we are distracted that the enemy (and I do not use that term loosely) is not sleeping.

Case in point: According to both Federal and New Jersey law, hospitals that receive Federal funding must permit health care professionals who don’t want to participate in abortions to opt out of participating. At the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, nurses have long been exempt by policy (and by executive order, prior to the election of Obama) from participating in the care of women who come to seek abortions, given that the line between what constitutes direct participation in the abortion and “post-abortion care” is subject to abuse (as you will see below). Now, many of these nurses I am sure are pro-life. However, I would wager to say that there are a good number of people who are pro-choice in the abstract who nonetheless would want to be kept a million miles away from actually participating in an abortion. Just because you think something ought to be generally legal doesn’t mean you’re willing to do it yourself, especially for something that justifiably provokes strong emotional reactions like abortion. However, that has now changed, and the hospital is requiring them as a condition of their employment to participate in the care of women who come for abortions.

We are not talking about taking these women’s blood pressure and temperature, here. We are discussing being forced tocatch the dismembered body parts of aborted babies as they are removed from their mothers. I mean, hey, that’s after the abortion is done, so it’s just post-abortion care, I guess? I frankly do not know what would have to be wrong with a person for them to not be bothered by this, especially if you’re pro-life. So the women are suing, claiming religious discrimination and violation of applicable Federal and State law, and a Federal Judge has granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the hospital from forcing them to undergo the training under the new policy.

(As a side note, they are being represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, which is one of the most worthy conservative charities of your donations on the face of the earth. If you have ever bemoaned the lack of a conservative answer to the ACLU, know that ADF is attempting to bridge that gap but they face an enormous funding disparity. Thus ends this plug.)

What sort of person, regardless of their beliefs about the legality of abortion, would not at least feel sympathy for someone forced to participate in abortions (or “post-abortion care” such as disposing of the remains of an aborted child) against their will as a condition of their employment in these dark economic times? The answer, apparently, is virtuallyevery cheerleader of the entire abortion lobby. The contemptible site Jezebel, which seems to exist for no reason other than to cheerlead the execution of small human beings, quipped,

“From the way the complaint describes it, you’d think they were being ordered to line babies up and shoot them with a crossbow in front of their children.”

Hilarious! Can you believe these prudish rube nurses and their moral qualms? Note also that the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project has chimed in:

“These are health care professionals who work at a publicly funded hospital saying that they do not want to do the job they were hired to do, including caring for a woman before or after surgery.” She added, “People have a right to their beliefs, but that shouldn’t give them the right to discriminate against patients who need medical care.”

Note that these same people believe strongly that everyone in America is legally entitled to a workplace that is free of crass sexual jokes (a position with which I have a large amount of sympathy even if I don’t think it should necessarily be the law); however, they absolutely cannot understand why anyone would feel that they are entitled to do their jobs without being forced as a condition of their employment to help perform an act that they equate with murder. And rest assured that they will not stop until that is the law.

These sorts of icky social issues have been swept under the rug by economic issues, and I guess that makes political sense. But it is worth remembering that in this fight, the other side never, ever sleeps, and hasn’t put its agenda on hold even for a minute.