
CV NEWS FEED // Nuns are leading the challenge against New York’s abortion provision mandate in a case set to appear before the New York Court of Appeals next week, according to religious liberty law firm Becket.
In 2017, the New York State Department of Financial Services issued a mandate requiring all private insurance companies that offer maternity care coverage to cover abortion costs for clients in New York. In 2021, the Diocese of Albany, along with Anglican and Catholic nuns, other dioceses, Christian churches, and religious ministries sued the state over the abortion mandate, arguing that it violated their religious beliefs. The Catholic nuns in the lawsuit are Carmelites who minister to elderly people at a nursing home.
“Each group is challenging New York’s abortion mandate because it believes that life begins at the moment of conception, and that to intentionally end the life of an unborn child is a grave moral sin,” according to Becket’s information webpage on the case:
However, unless they receive protection in court, these orders, ministries, and churches will either have to violate their deepest religious convictions and provide abortions, or eliminate their employees’ health insurance altogether, which would subject them to crippling fines totaling millions of dollars per year.
The state courts’ response to the case, Diocese of Albany v. Vullo, was to leave the mandate in place.
Becket, along with law firms Jones Day and Tobin and Dempf, LLP, petitioned the decision to the Supreme Court of the United States.
In 2021, SCOTUS reversed the state court’s ruling, requiring the court to reconsider the case before the New York Court of Appeals.
Oral arguments for the case are now set for April 16. A decision on the case is not expected until later this year, Becket reported in a news release titled, “Nuns lead charge against New York abortion mandate.”
