Boston College Law dean John Garvey, in an op-ed that also elegantly makes the jurisprudential case for the Stupak amendment, contextualizes Brown’s support for religious exemptions from the distribution of emergency contraception, and the resultant smear from the Coakley campaign, within a tradition as old as the Founders:

For those who believe that human life begins at conception, a morning-after pill can sometimes be a form of abortion if it acts after fertilization. Forcing a nurse with religious scruples to provide such a pill is a more extreme measure than the one Madison remonstrated against [in his “Memorial and Remonstrance,” written in opposition to an act of the Virginia legislature that provided state support for teachers of religion]. It is a case of forcing her not to cooperate with evil, but to do evil herself (as she sees it). It’s not like taxing Quakers to support the army; it’s like drafting a Quaker into the infantry and ordering him to shoot the enemy.
Political ads by nature are not sensitive to nuance. Coakley’s ad charges Brown with a lack of “understanding or seriousness” because he “favors letting hospitals deny emergency contraception to rape victims.” But suggesting that we protect the right of conscience does not show a lack of understanding or seriousness. It does not even show a lack of support for abortion – any more than it shows a lack of support for the armed forces to say that we should exempt Quakers. What both show is a decent respect for religious liberty, as admirable and American as [James Madison] the author of the First Amendment.