Martha Coakley, the Democrat candidate for Senate in Massachusetts, spoke on a radio show earlier this week about hospital employees who refuse to provide certain types of care (emergency contraception, abortion) because of religious objections:

Ken Pittman: Right, if you are a Catholic, and believe what the Pope teaches that any form of birth control is a sin. ah you don’t want to do that.

Martha Coakley: No we have a separation of church and state Ken, lets be clear.

Ken Pittman: In the emergency room you still have your religious freedom.

Martha Coakley: (……uh, eh…um..) The law says that people are allowed to have that. You can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.

The remark got a lot of negative press, and deservedly so. Separation of church and state implies that the state will not inject itself into matters of religious conscience that do not interfere with its ability to establish a secular order. Those with religious beliefs that condemn contraception should have the freedom to follow their convictions. State Senator Scott Brown, Coakley’s opponent, sponsored an amendment that would have preserved that freedom to a 2005 bill that mandated hospitals provide emergency contraception.

So in response, Coakley released this ad, which reads:

1,736 women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008.
Scott Brown wants hospitals to turn them all away.

Wanting some people to have the option to refuse to provide some kinds of care is not at all the same thing as actively wishing that all hospitals refuse all care to rape victims. Brown’s campaign just held a press conference announcing they will press charges in response to the flyer.

In this country, health care is the free exchange of a service and money between two individuals. If the doctor or nurse isn’t willing to provide a service, he or she should not be compelled to do so.