Illinois’ Southern Baptist churches and two business owners have banded together in court, asking a Springfield judge to throw out an Illinois law they say illegally requires all employers – even Christian churches – to pay for abortion services against their will, without exception.
On June 10, the plaintiffs filed suit in Sangamon County Circuit Court in Springfield against the state of Illinois. They are represented by attorneys with the firms of Drake Narup & Mead P.C., of Springfield, and Ottsen Leggat & Belz L.C., of Clayton, Mo., and with the Thomas More Society, of Chicago.
Plaintiffs in the action included the Springfield-based Illinois Baptist State Association, which counts “nearly 1,000 churches and mission congregations” as members; Southland Smiles Ltd., a dental practice in suburban Flossmoor; and Rock River Cartage Inc., a trucking company, based in Sterling, in north central Illinois.
The lawsuit takes aim at the so-called Reproductive Health Act of 2019, which was signed into law last year by Gov. JB Pritzker, after winning approval on a party-line vote in the Illinois General Assembly.
The law includes a provision specifically requiring all employers in the state to fund “abortion care” for workers as part of any health insurance policy that includes maternity and pregnancy care coverage.
The plaintiffs note the law does not include any “religious or moral exemptions” to the abortion funding requirement, even though “Illinois does have a religious exemption to its requirement that health plans cover fertility treatment.”
“Taken together, the intent is clear that religious individuals and organizations are to comply with the abortion coverage mandate,” the lawsuit states.
The plaintiffs assert these coverage requirements violate Illinois’ religious freedom law, as well as the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which “protects ‘health care payers’ from being forced to pay for objected-tp medical services.”
The complaint also cites the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores. Under that decision, employers – even non-religious employers, whose owners have “sincerely held religious beliefs” can be exempted from “funding and providing employee health care coverage for abortion.”
In this case, the plaintiffs said the abortion-funding requirements conflict with their “sincerely held religious beliefs” that abortion “involves the destruction of human life and is gravely wrong and sinful.”
By requiring all employers to fund abortions, the law attempts to coerce all employers to change their religious beliefs to abide by the desires of the state.
The plaintiffs said they filed suit “to escape the dilemma in which they find themselves.”
“Plaintiffs cannot continue in good conscience to comply with the State’s immoral and illegal mandate in violation of their faith,” they said.
The plaintiffs have asked the court to rule the Reproductive Health Act’s abortion coverage requirements unlawful and void, and block the state from enforcing the law against them and others who agree with them on the issue of abortion.
“Radical partisans have forced employers of faith in Illinois into a terrible choice: either pay for the intentional termination of unborn children, or leave your employees’ families and your own without health insurance,” said Peter Breen, a former state lawmaker who now serves as vice president and senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, in a prepared statement. “The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly condemned this sort of government coercion against people of faith...
“Illinois law protects the sincerely held beliefs of our state’s nonprofits and businesses, but our state’s politicians and bureaucrats have sat silent in response to the conscientious objections of people of faith to paying for elective abortions.”