A set of regulations by the Department of Health and Human Services, intended to go into effect tomorrow, would have expanded the right of medical professionals to refuse, as a matter of conscience, to perform certain procedures or provide certain drugs. But, earlier this month, a federal court struck down the rules, which would apply, for instance, to a doctor who doesn’t wish to perform euthanasia in a state where it is legal to do so or to a nurse who doesn’t wish to administer a vaccine manufactured from fetal tissue. Without objecting to the largely technical grounds on which the court invalidated the regulations, Moishe Bane and Nathan Diament argue in favor of such protections:

American law, both legislative and judicial, has a magnificent tradition of accommodating the rights and needs of individuals with conflicting interests. Surely, such mutual accommodations should be the aspiration of regulations regarding health and medical care. Sadly, in certain contexts—such as regarding women’s reproductive rights and euthanasia—achieving a balanced approach to competing rights is not the goal of some judges and legislators who instead seek to diminish, and [even] to dismiss, the rights of those Americans committed to abide by their religious tenets.

Even in controversial contexts, legislators have successfully found a middle ground to provide rights to services for some individuals while simultaneously ensuring protections for those unable to provide those services on religious grounds. . . . Unfortunately, [however], respect for the conscience rights of healthcare providers (and other Americans of faith) has been persistently attacked.

The denigration and dismissal of religious belief is frequently advanced in association with both abortion and LGBT rights. Rather than seeking to ensure that these legal rights are balanced with the competing, authentic religious rights of others, many abortion and LGBT advocates frame values borne of religion as illegitimate and undeserving of respect, let alone entitled to legal protection. They assert that any accommodation of religious belief is tantamount to using religion as “a sword” to harm others. Experience has now shown that the preservation of religious-conscience protections need not impose significant burdens on others.

Our courts and our culture must be reminded that America was founded by those who were seeking religious freedom; that is why they enshrined its protection in the First Amendment. A devout Jewish doctor who declines to issue an assisted-suicide prescription shouldn’t be forced to choose between her career and conscience any more than a faithful Catholic attorney who doesn’t want to work on a death-penalty case, or a committed feminist web designer who doesn’t want to build a pornographic website.

Yasir Arafat was often quoted as saying that his “strongest weapon is the womb of an Arab woman.” That is, he believed the high birthrates of both Palestinians and Arab Israelis ensured that Jews would eventually be a minority in the Land of Israel, at which point Arabs could call for a binational state and get an Arab one. Using similar logic, both Israelis and their self-styled sympathizers have made the case for territorial concessions to prevent such an eventuality. Yet, Yoram Ettinger argues, the statistics have year after year told a different story:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives. Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing them, ignoring a 100-percent artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, an inflated birth rate, and deflated death rate.

The U.S. should derive much satisfaction from Israel’s demographic viability and therefore, Israel’s enhanced posture of deterrence, which is America’s top force- and dollar-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond.