Ignoring Supreme Court Ruling, NY Courts Try to Force Religious Organizations to Pay for Abortions

Why would any lawmaker or judge want to force religious organizations to offer employee health insurance plans that cover abortions? Killing unborn babies is not a right that overcomes the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion or moral objections to killing babies in the womb.

Pro-life individuals and organizations have to battle every day to resist government coercion to stain our hands with the blood of slaughtered children.

According to Becket Law, a coalition of religious organizations in New York — which includes nuns, churches, and faith-based social ministries — thought they’d already fought this battle in 2017. They sued the state over a mandate that forced them to cover abortions in employee health insurance plans. The state allows a limited religious exemption, which didn’t cover coalition members.

Lower courts declined to protect these members, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the courts’ rulings and ordered them to reconsider the case in light of Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021). A unanimous Supreme Court ruled in Fulton that the city’s non-discrimination requirement imposed a burden on Catholic Social Services (which sought to operate in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs).

But the lower courts in New York apparently care nothing about Fulton. Now the coalition has asked the Supreme Court a second time to protect their religious freedom.

“…New York courts insisted that nothing had changed,” the plaintiffs wrote in the complaint (PDF). “Rather than thoughtfully applying Fulton and this Court’s other intervening Free Exercise holdings, the New York courts asserted that Fulton had no impact on this case and re-affirmed their own pre-Fulton precedent, including the case they had originally relied on in ruling against the Religious Ministries.”

Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, said New York’s religious exemption to the abortion mandate is “so extreme that not even Jesus, Mother Teresa, or Mahatma Gandhi would qualify for an exemption. The Justices should exempt religious organizations once and for all so they can focus on caring for the most vulnerable.”

Yes, once and for all. Ordering religious Americans to pay for abortions? The Supreme Court has already spoken on this issue, but abortion advocates want nothing more than to continue the slaughter — and expect pro-life Americans to pay for it.