Geneva College challenges U.S. birth control rule
Share with others:
Geneva College, an evangelical school that provides contraceptive insurance to its employees, has filed suit against the federal government because it says recently enacted health insurance rules require it to provide "morning after" drugs that could act after fertilization.
The school says it doesn't trust the Obama administration's recent promise to broaden an exemption for religious institutions.
"Our suit is not directed against preventative contraception," said Kenneth Smith, president of Geneva.
"It's about the government requiring us and other religious organizations to provide services against which we have a religious and morally based conviction. For us this is the requirement that we offer abortion-inducing drugs as part of our employer-provided health benefits."
The school, located in Beaver Falls and with an enrollment of about 1,900, belongs to the theologically conservative Reformed Presbyterian Church. The student handbook calls abortion "immoral." The students and faculty have a history of anti-abortion activism. As Mr. Smith spoke, about 250 cheering students packed the room.
The college covers most contraceptives but has a contract with its provider explicitly excluding drugs and devices designed to prevent implantation of a fertilized ovum, he said.
With Geneva, five schools and the Catholic cable network EWTN have now filed lawsuits. The other school to file Tuesday was Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., whose president, James Towey, is the former president of Saint Vincent College in Latrobe and a past director of the Bush administration's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
Other groups that had also objected strenuously to the original rule, including the Catholic Health Association, have said they are satisfied with a plan to revise the rule before it is slated to go into effect for religious agencies in August 2013. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops remains opposed to it as written.
First Published February 22, 2012 12:00 am
