The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, New York, is appealing a decision by a New York appeals court to force the church and other religious charities to pay for abortion coverage in their employee health insurance plans. The Diocese is asking the United States Supreme Court to intervene.
According to The Epoch Times, Lori Windham, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said during an online press conference on July 25 that the diocese is preparing a petition for certiorari to be filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany v. Harris. Defendant Adrienne A. Harris is the Superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, which is the agency behind the decision to force religious charities to pay for abortions.
In May, a New York Court of Appeals rejected the 2017 challenge to the law by various Roman Catholic dioceses, Lutheran and Baptist churches, and Anglican nuns. The law states that all employers must offer “medically necessary” abortion coverage under their health insurance policies.
“Medically necessary” abortions are defined extremely broadly, as “necessary to prevent, diagnose, correct, or cure conditions in the person that cause acute suffering, endanger life, result in illness or infirmity, interfere with a person’s capacity for normal activity, or threaten some significant handicap.” This description would appear to allow the intentional killing of a preborn child for nearly any reason, especially when language like “prevent[ing]” or “diagnos[ing]… conditions… that result in illness” or “interfere with a person’s capacity for normal activity” is included.
Exactly what qualifies under this definition is said to be up to the discretion of the abortionist, potentially forcing churches opposed to abortion to pay for abortions no matter the true circumstances.
It is never “medically necessary” to intentionally and directly kill a preborn child. Treatment for ectopic pregnancies, preterm premature rupture of membranes, and other conditions are not considered abortions. When a mother’s life is truly at risk during pregnancy and the pregnancy must end, doctors can deliver the child alive and/or attempt to save both lives when possible. If the child is unable to be saved, the treatment given to the mother is still not considered an abortion because the intent of the treatment was to save the mother’s life, not to intentionally kill the baby.
The New York law does include religious exemptions; however, they are too narrow, argued the diocese. The only organizations exempt from the rule were those non-profits whose primary purpose was the “inculcation of religious values” and who employed and served those who shared those beliefs. Under those guidelines, the Catholic Church, which both serves and employs a wide variety of people who are not necessarily Catholic, would be excluded from any religious exemptions.
“If you primarily serve people of your own faith, then you can have an exception, but if you open your doors to all … [to] care for anyone regardless of your faith, if you’re out there offering a cup of soup to anyone who’s hungry, regardless of what their faith background is, then you lose your religious freedom protections, you lose your exemption under the statute, and you must also pay for abortions,” said Windham.
The case has been winding through the court system for years, previously making it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which vacated a decision in favor of the state in November 2021. The U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back to the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court to examine, based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2021 decision in Fulton v. Philadelphia. That case stemmed from the City of Philadelphia’s decision to prohibit Catholic Social Services from placing children in foster homes because of its policy of not licensing same-sex couples to be foster parents. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the City of Philadephia violated the Catholic charity’s rights.
And yet, after reconsidering the case as instructed in June 2022 based on the Fulton decision, the Appellate Division again sided with the state and ruled that an abortion coverage mandate did not violate the First Amendment rights of the Catholic Church. In May 2024, the New York Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling, leading to this latest appeal.
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]
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