SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WCIA) – A number of anti-abortion groups are suing Gov. Pritzker, Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Ann Gillespie, the acting director of the Department of Insurance, hoping to ban the enforcement of a state law requiring insurance policies to provide coverage for abortion care.
“As the state digs in deeper and deeper to the kinds of health, what they call health care coverage, that is in opposition to our strongly held moral principles, we felt it was time,” Ann Scheidler, the president of the Pro-Life Action League, one of the anti-abortion groups named in the lawsuit, said.
The federal lawsuit, filed Wednesday by the Thomas More Society on behalf of six anti-abortion groups, claims the law is unconstitutional violating the groups’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
“Our right to religious freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment would cover, of course, our belief that the right to life ought to be a paramount right in this country,” Scheidler said.
The groups argue the law doesn’t provide any exceptions for people or employers who oppose abortion. They say they’re forced to buy state-regulated health insurance policies that are required to cover abortions and medications that help end a pregnancy.
As a result, they argue they’re paying for people’s abortions through their insurance premiums.
“When you’re a small organization, you can’t afford to self-insure, you have to purchase some kind of health insurance,” Scheidler said. “If you’re going to provide that for your employees, it’s going to cover abortion and we know that none of our employees want the service or the coverage.”
A spokesperson for Pritzker called the lawsuit “extreme”.
“This is nothing but another extreme action that would put the safety of women seeking reproductive care in jeopardy,” Alex Gough, a spokesperson for Pritzker, said in a statement. “As long as Governor Pritzker is in office, Illinois will continue to protect access to reproductive care for those who seek it in our state.”
Raoul said he is focused on protecting people’s reproductive rights in Illinois and ensuring that the care is covered by insurance.
“I am equally committed to protecting access to coverage for reproductive health care that includes abortion, because cost should not stand in the way of patients receiving critical abortion care,” Raoul said in a statement.
The Thomas More Society represented anti-abortion groups in a different lawsuit last year. At the time, they asked for an injunction to stop a law cracking down on crisis pregnancy centers from going into effect as it made its way through the courts.
Raoul later agreed to a permanent injunction stopping the law from going into effect.