Add Freedom of Conscience to Alaska’s Constitution

by Representative Terry Martin

After I had been in the Legislature for awhile, I was surprised to find out that our constitution does not protect the individual’s freedom of conscience. I was flabbergasted--some states have protected this fundamental freedom for 300 years, going way back to Colonial times. Why didn’t Alaska?

What do we mean when we say "freedom of conscience?" The United States is a nation founded on the free exercise of one’s conscience; it is the very foundation of the freedom of religion. America’s founding fathers made sure the freedom of conscience was clearly spelled out, because they recognized how important it is.

What is it to claim a freedom of religion if one is not to be able to act upon one’s conscience when religious beliefs collide with the secular world? The freedom to exercise one’s religious beliefs--or even non-religious, but moral beliefs--is the most fundamental precept of freedom of religion.

I and others have endeavored for 10 years to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot to let the voters decide on protecting freedom of conscience. This year, that effort is embodied in HJR 5.

In Alaska, we have been careful to articulate the rights of the individual in our constitution. Perhaps the right to freedom of conscience has simply been taken for granted, as implied by the protection of the freedom of religion, or as codified in the state law that allowed abortion. Indeed, that is the only place in Alaska law where anyone tried to protect the individual’s freedom of conscience.

Having the freedom of conscience in statute has not been sufficient, however, and a state supreme court decision now forces Alaskan hospitals to offer abortions, even though their directors object to abortions because they are morally opposed to the killing of innocent human life. Today’s new emphasis on assisted suicide, euthanasia, and infanticide could well become public governmental policy, mandated by the courts or the legislature.

Any convoluted rationalization of a social policy that forces a person to participate in what he or she considers to be murder--or risk losing their job, their professional license, or an institution’s public funding--puts Alaska at the doorstep of Nazi Germany of the 1930s or of the many communist despotisms of this century.

Another shocking fact of life was revealed the other day when the Alaska Civil Liberties Union, in testifying against HJR 5, showed us that it will oppose anything and everything it perceives might diminish the supreme "right" to abortion.

I have always believed that the ACLU held as its highest imperative to protect the civil liberties of Alaskans. But why are they opposed to protecting the freedom of conscience?

HJR 5 would not reduce a woman’s "right" to an abortion, or even make abortions less available in Alaska. It would simply protect another person’s freedom of conscience to not participate in an abortion.

By adding the protection proposed by HJR 5 to the Alaska Constitution, we can make it crystal clear that Alaskans really do enjoy complete freedom of conscience, just as most people imagine they now do.

We should not be afraid to spell out this freedom in our constitution--a freedom protected in many of the lower 48 states since Colonial times.