When the Center for American Progress held an event last month to highlight the release of its report on religious liberty in the United States, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) was the keynote speaker.

"Authoritarianism seeks to compel, seeks to repress, seeks to prevent free thought, free worship, free expression," Coons said in his address.

"Religious freedom, as I've said, is a fundamental threat to authoritarianism," he said, "and it is because of our commitment to a freedom of faith that we are also, as a nation, committed to an equality of all."

"So, I think it is the job of a senator to hold fast to the foundational freedoms of our republic," he said. "I think freedom of religion is among those most basic and eternal. And I think when we fail to remember that and to give it life, and purpose, and meaning, we no longer deserve the freedoms for which our forebears fought. To defend our nation and what it means is to defend religious freedom. To defend our Constitution is to defend religious freedom. To defend religious freedom is to defend ourselves, our future, and our very republic."

This was a profoundly ironic declaration from a senator who once used his position to promote one of the federal government's most egregious attacks ever on the freedom of religion.

After former President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010, his administration issued a regulation under that act that required health insurance plans provided by private companies to cover "(a)ll Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods."

However, some of these FDA-approved contraceptive methods did not actually prevent conception; they acted instead as........

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