Seven different churches compelled to cover elective abortions via their health insurance plans are suing California Governor Jerry Brown’s administration, with assistance from Alliance Defending Freedom and Life Legal Defence Foundation.
In August, after two Catholic universities refused to offer abortion coverage in their employee insurance plans, California’s Department of Managed Healthcare issued letters saying that refusing to pay for any abortion, whether medically necessary or not, would be a violation of the state constitution, and of a 1975 law.
Forcing churches to cover elective abortions assaults a fundamental American freedom, said ADF senior counsel Casey Mattox. “California is flagrantly violating the federal law that protects employers from being forced into having abortion in their health insurance plans,” Mattox said.
ADF and LLDF have filed a formal complaint with the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights. It alleges that California is in violation of the Weldon Amendment, enacted by Congress each year since 2005, which requires a state to forfeit all healthcare funding from the federal government if it doesn’t allow for conscientious objection on abortion.
Tracy Spiegel of the San Jose Mercury News reports that “the controversy surfaced last year after administrators at Santa Clara University and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, both founded by the Jesuit order, decided to drop health insurance coverage of elective abortions.
“The decision led to uproar among staff and faculty at each institution, prompting some members to reach out to non-profits like Planned Parenthood for assistance. Those abortion rights advocates in turn contacted the Legislature’s Women’s Caucus, which sent a letter to Gov. Brown this month asking him to direct the department to change its position about what constitutes a covered abortion.”
In her letter to insurance companies, the director of the Department of Managed Healthcare, Michelle Rouillaird, cited a 1975 state law requiring health plans to cover “basic health services”, and wrote that the DMHC now considered “voluntary termination pregnancy” to come under that umbrella. Previously, the State of California didn’t cover elective abortion even in its own state employee health plans.
The two universities have said they will comply with the new interpretation of the law, but the seven churches suing the state, as well as a group of employees in Loyala Marymount University who are pursuing a seperate lawsuits, say that that California’s action unacceptably burdens their religious freedom.
California, like the federal government, exempts churches from its contraceptive mandate, so its new directive will mean that they can opt out of paying for insurance that covers contraception, but not abortion.
