The Christian right, both Catholics and evangelicals, wants to outlaw birth control. This isn't a new revelation, but in the last few weeks, they've been saying it so often and so loudly that the public is starting to take notice. Of course, they don't have anywhere near the political muscle to actually achieve this - but what they hope to do is make access to contraception as difficult and expensive as possible, effectively putting it out of the reach of millions of people.

As part of their anti-birth-control crusade, the Christian churches have argued that religious employers have a constitutional right not to pay for health insurance plans for their employees that include coverage of contraception. They say that doing otherwise would violate their religious liberty. If that were true, it would suggest a few other hypothetical applications of the principle:

• I'm a business owner and a Jehovah's Witness, and I believe blood transfusions are against the will of God. Can I insist on my employees having a health insurance plan that doesn't cover transfusions or bone marrow transplants, even in the case of leukemia or serious trauma?
• I'm a business owner and an Orthodox Jew, and I believe it's a sin to work on the Sabbath except in life-or-death situations. Can I insist on my employees having a health insurance plan that doesn't pay for any non-emergency medical procedure or doctor's visit that takes place on Saturdays?
• I'm a business owner and a conservative Muslim, and I believe it's wrong for the genders to associate in public. Can I insist on my employees having a health insurance plan that doesn't pay for male patients to be treated by female doctors or vice versa?
• I'm a business owner and an evangelical Christian, and I believe AIDS is God's punishment for gay people. Can I insist on my employees having a health insurance plan that doesn't cover antiretroviral drugs?
• I'm a business owner who believes, for religious reasons, that sex outside marriage is a sin. Can I insist on my employees having a health insurance plan that doesn't pay for prenatal care unless the woman is married? If I also believe that divorce is a sin, can I insist on a plan that doesn't pay for prenatal care if the woman is divorced and remarried?
• I'm a business owner and an atheist, and I think religious belief is a bad idea that should be discouraged. Can I insist on my employees having a health insurance plan that charges $200 a month extra for anyone who regularly attends church, and distribute those fees to my atheist employees in the form of lower premiums?

As absurd and intolerable as all these examples seem, this is what the theocrats are calling for. What they want is a patchwork system where your ability to access health care is at the whim of your employer, who can insert himself into the relationship between you and your doctor and arbitrarily deny you any procedure he doesn't think people should be allowed to have. And to be clear, this doesn't just apply to church-owned institutions: the bishops have been outspoken in their belief that any private business owner should be able to deny any health insurance to employees based on his religious convictions, even if he's just the manager of a Taco Bell. If you think this has more than a faint echo of medieval serfdom, where your life is completely governed by the dictates of your employer, you're not wrong.