Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Imagine the level of depravity it would take for a state to block a doctor from prescribing medication to try to stop the death of an unborn baby after a pregnant woman changes her mind about killing him.
That’s what the Colorado legislature did. Lawmakers decided that if a woman decides to kill her baby, she can’t change her mind, and no doctor can prescribe live-saving measures.
Doctors may prescribe mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone to kill the baby by starving him of nutrients. Although the state allows doctors to prescribe the naturally occurring hormone progesterone to help prevent miscarriages, doctors cannot prescribe progesterone to reverse abortions.
According to SB 190, it is “unprofessional conduct” to honor the Hippocratic Oath when it comes to babies who’ve been poisoned in the womb.
Bella Health + Wellness, a faith-based health care provider, filed a lawsuit against the state to stop enforcement of the law. This provider prescribes progesterone to help women prevent miscarriages and said it has a religious duty to help women who want to reverse abortions. Colorado said it couldn’t. From Liberty Counsel:
According to the lawsuit, Bella Health considers it a religious obligation to protect unborn life and provide treatment to pregnant mothers seeking to stop an abortion in progress. The clinic alleges that biased legislators crafted the bill to “target” both women who have changed their minds about abortion and faith-based pregnancy resource centers that offer abortion alternatives.
Bella Health claimed that the law violates the First Amendment and Free Exercise rights of employees. The provider also said the law chills free speech.
The court agreed and blocked enforcement of the law against Bella Health. The judge contended that the law is not neutral and lawmakers knew the law would burden religious practice.
So the legislature made a law to target providers like Bella Health?
“The target of the bill is plainly abortion bill reversal…it seems clear then, both given this legislative history and the bill’s text itself, that the legislature was aware that the burden of this prohibition would primarily fall on religious adherents…But when the practice [the state] chooses to ban is one that it knows is undertaken for religious reasons, it loses the protections.”
The court noted that Colorado allows doctors to use progesterone to help stop miscarriages…but not abortions. The judge wrote that “the law treats comparable secular activity more favorably than Bella Health’s religious activity.”
Didn’t the government’s lawyers review this legislation before trying to enforce it against faith-based providers?
Liberty Counsel stated that Colorado has until November 20 to appeal the decision.
