At his Thursday press conference, House Speaker John Boehner was asked a reasonable question: He's agreed to hold a vote on a resolution
opposing a Washington, D.C., law preventing employers from firing people because of their reproductive health decisions,
from abortion to in vitro fertilization. There's only two days left before a deadline for congressional action against that law expires, the Senate isn't going to do anything about it, and the president wouldn't sign an attack on the District's law, so why is the House voting on it? Boehner
stuck firmly to the Republican script:
We have a number of members who are concerned about this issue, and the issue is one of religious liberty. This is about conscience protections that the president says he supports but really hasn't put regulations in place to protect the conscience clause that's been frankly a part of our laws and statutes for decades and decades. And so our members thought it was important and that's why it was added to the schedule.
It's a law prohibiting a type of employer discrimination, passed by a city government elected by residents of the city, and House Republicans want to override it. In the name of liberty, but obviously not democracy.
The "conscience" House Republicans want to protect here is the conscience to fire people for their healthcare choices. And they're willing to take time making a show of that even though the action isn't going anywhere, not just because House Republicans are always happy to take time to show off how extreme they are but because they're waging a longer-term fight to fool the media and voters into thinking that an employer's freedom to fire someone is more important than a worker's freedom to get the health care they choose without being fired for it.