When Republican senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts makes the case for a bill that would restore the conscience protections that existed prior to Obamacare, he frequently notes that his Democratic predecessor Ted Kennedy shared the same position. But Kennedy’s son Patrick, former congressman from Rhode Island, says that Brown is misrepresenting his deceased father’s views and that his father only supported conscience protections based on religious objections, not “moral objections.”
“My father believed that health care providers should be allowed a conscience exemption from performing any service that conflicted with their faith,” Kennedy wrote in a letter to Brown over the weekend. “That is completely different than the broad language of the Blunt Amendment that will allow any employer, or even an insurance company, to use vague moral objections as an excuse to refuse to provide health care coverage. My father never would have supported this extreme legislation.”
