In just a few months, a U.S. Court of Appeals is expected to rule on a case that will decide whether health care providers in Illinois must violate their consciences and promote and refer women for abortions.
Cardinal Cupich and the rest of Illinois’ bishops have weighed in on the matter as part of an “amicus” or “friend-of-the-court” brief filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty on Dec. 16.
Other participants in the brief, which is related to the case of National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Treto, are the Illinois Catholic Health Association, the Orthodox Church in America and the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of New Gračanica-Midwestern America.
In this case, a group of pro-life pregnancy centers and doctors is challenging a 2016 amendment to the state’s Health Care Right of Conscience Act that requires any healthcare professional who declines to perform abortions for reasons of conscience to tell women about the “benefits” of abortion and refer women to abortion providers, the brief explains.
Those who refuse to do so lose the legal protections that normally shield them from malpractice suits, discrimination claims and enforcement action by the state licensing board, the Becket Fund reported.
In a series of posts to his X account on Dec. 16, Cardinal Cupich said the church’s pro-life mission is under attack in Illinois.
“The state is pushing an aggressive mandate seeking to punish healthcare workers who refuse to aid and abet abortion. The Catholic bishops of Illinois are standing side by side with these conscientious objectors to stop this inhumane mandate,” he wrote. “Catholic pro-life ministries in Illinois are now in the government’s crosshairs. These ministries exist to offer life-affirming care to mothers, children, and families in need, rooted in the belief that every person is made in the image of God.”
The state is demanding that providers promote a message that contradicts this belief, which is at the core of their ministry, he wrote.
“That is a line faithful Catholics cannot cross,” his post said. “As Pope Francis once reminded us, ‘every child who, rather than being born, is condemned unjustly to be aborted, bears the face of Jesus Christ.’ We must never surrender to governing authorities who command us to say otherwise.”
By giving a referral, a person becomes part of the “causal chain” of an abortion, said Jim Geoly, general counsel for the Archdiocese of Chicago.
“I’m helping you get an abortion, so it’s cooperation with evil,” Geoly explained. “I am sinning. I am liable to God for assisting you in getting that abortion. I don’t have a duty to stop you or to lie to you or anything like that. But if I take a step that actually carries you to an abortion further, that violates my conscience, and my morals and my church law and, under my own religious beliefs, I go to hell for that. Plus, it’s a form of compelled speech.”
The case could be resolved if the state gave a religious exemption in the act, Geoly said, but it does not want to do that.
The goal of the amicus brief is to provide insight that is not covered by the briefs already presented to the court in the case.
“We’ve provided a very rich and deep history going all the way back to old English law — the Magna Carta — about the origins of the right not to be compelled to speak,” Geoly said, “because it has its origins in religious liberty and not to make people profess things they don’t believe.”
Having two Orthodox dioceses as part of the amicus brief shows that the issue has support beyond the Catholic Church, he said.
While this case impacts anyone connected to health care because they could be forced to violate their conscience, it affects Catholics outside of that realm too, Geoly said.
“If I’m a Catholic, generally I would care a lot because it puts the church in the position of defeating its own mission by, in a sense, encouraging more abortions to occur against our right as a church to abstain from that,” Geoly said.
The case impacts non-Catholics as well, he said, because if the state can compel the speech of one group it can compel the speech of many other groups.
“The point about our Bill of Rights and the rule of law is kind of a simple notion. There’s supposed to be neutral rules neutrally applied. The rules are not meant to skew to one side or the other,” Geoly said. “This statue is meant to interfere with that, to take away the liberty of just one side.”