Anti-Abortion Group Sues Illinois State Officials Over 'Unconscionable' Insurance Mandate

CHICAGO — A dozen plaintiffs represented by a conservative Catholic legal nonprofit, filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against Illinois state officials seeking to block state laws requiring state-insured health car plans to cover abortions.

The six individuals and six organizations — an Aurora business, a Chicago church, a Wheaton school and a trio of anti-abortion nonprofit — are challenging Illinois statutes that mandate insurers to cover abortions on the same terms as pregnancy-related benefits and to provide abortion-inducing drugs at no cost to beneficiaries.

The Chicago-based Thomas More Society filed a complaint on their behalf naming Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Ann Gillespie, acting director of Illinois Department of Insurance, as defendants.

The suit alleges that mandates in the Illinois Insurance Code violate constitutional protections for religious freedom and expressive association under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

It also argues federal statutes prohibiting discrimination against any "health care entity" that refuses to be involved — known as the Weldon Amendment and the Coates-Snowe Amendment — should preempt Illinois law.

“If billionaire Gov. J.B. Pritzker wants to pay for abortions in his state out of the generosity of his heart, that can be his choice. Instead, Pritzker and state officials have manipulated and supported a law to force all Illinois residents to cover his choice of abortion for them," Kristan Hawkins, president of plaintiff Students for Life of America, said in a statement.

All of the plaintiffs argue they cannot afford to self-insure or to purchase level-funded employer health plans. One says it has an employee who suffers from a preexisting condition that makes other available health insurance plans financially unfeasible.

"Christian bill-sharing is also not an option because bill-sharing companies will not accept members with expensive preexisting health conditions," according to the suit.

"So Midwest Bible Church, which needs to provide health insurance to its employees, including the employee who is currently suffering from an expensive pre-existing health condition, has obtained health insurance for its employees from Blue Cross Blue Shield," it said, "but the Blue Cross Blue Shield plan (as required by Illinois law) covers elective abortions and abortifacients without cost-sharing arrangements, in violation of Midwest Bible Church’s religious beliefs."

The lawsuit follows a similar legal battle by the Illinois Baptist State Association, which unsuccessfully challenged the law earlier this year in state court under the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

In that case, a Sangamon County judge ruled the Baptist group had the option to select insurance plans without abortion coverage, like federally managed plans or those from out-of-state insurers. The Thomas More Society provided free legal assistance to the association, which pledged to appeal.

Pritzker has defended the law and Illinois' approach to protecting reproductive rights in the wake of this month's election of President Donald Trump.

“We’re going to do everything we can to continue to protect women and their reproductive health,” Pritzker said last week. “It is health care that they’re seeking, and I think that’s a right and not a privilege.”

In the two weeks following Trump's victory, requests for long-term birth control and abortion pills have surged nationwide, with some providers reporting spikes as high as 966% in emergency contraception sales and patients expressing fear of restricted access under a second Trump administration, according to the Associated Press.

The Illinois Reproductive Health Act, which Pritzker signed into law in June 2019, includes the insurance requirements and establishes abortion as a fundamental right in Illinois.

Speaking Thursday in Alton, the governor emphasized the Prairie State has become a "safe haven" for those seeking care in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, noting that the state "interstate shield law," which protects abortion providers and patients from out-of-state investigations.

"For people who would say they're opposed because there's some expenditure involved by the state of Illinois, actually, that's not the case. We don't pay for people's abortion services who are coming from out of state. " Pritzker told reporters.

"Honestly, I wish that the federal government did more to support, because these are poor women typically who are seeking this refuge. Many of them won't be able to even get here because they can't afford the gas, they can't afford the overnight stay, and they can't afford the services themselves," he said. "But we're doing everything here, and there have been foundations, nonprofits that do try to support women who otherwise can't afford those services."

Illinois has seen a sharp increase in patients traveling from neighboring states with restrictive abortion laws.

According to a 2023 Guttmacher Institute report, Illinois saw the largest rise in out-of-state abortion patients in the nation during the prior three years.

Now bordering three states with total abortion bans, the percentage of patients who come from out of state has risen from 21 percent to 42 percent, according to the report.

In the first half of 2023, nearly 19,000 women traveled from other states to obtain abortions in Illinois, which is one of more than a dozen states that allow advanced practice registered nurses and physician assistants, in addition to licensed doctors, to perform abortions.

Peter Breen, the Thomas More Society’s executive vice president and head of litigation, said the mandates on state-regulated insurance companies are "unconscionable" and violate his clients' constitutionally protected conscience rights.

The society previously secured a federal court ruling blocking an Illinois law that penalized anti-abortion counseling centers for allegedly using deceptive practices, with a judge citing it as a clear violation of the First Amendment.

"Gov. J.B. Pritzker and his administration are on an uncompromising campaign to transform the Land of Lincoln into the nation’s abortion capital. In doing so, they have shown little-to-no regard for the rights of those who believe that all human life is worth protecting," Breen said.

"There’s no reason," he added, "for pro-life individuals and organizations to be denied the option to choose an insurance policy that exempts them from covering others’ elective abortions."