HBU files appeal over contraceptive ruling

Houston Baptist University on Wednesday turned to the U.S. Supreme Court in its battle to avoid providing employees with forms of contraception it finds morally objectionable.

The appeal of a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling was filed on behalf of the Houston university, East Texas Baptist University and the Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania by lawyers with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

The case stems from a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulation requiring religious nonprofits to make all forms of government-approved contraception available to their employees without cost. Institutions that object on moral grounds may seek an exemption. The exemption transfers the nonprofits’ responsibility to provide the contraceptives to its health care provider, which, acting independently, makes drugs and devices available.

Government lawyers argue the exemption ends nonprofits’ moral culpability, but HBU and the other schools counter that an exemption merely sets in motion a process that still provides forms of contraception they find abhorrent.

The religious institutions find four forms of contraception objectionable, “morning-after pills,” “week-after pills” and two types of intrauterine devices. Those contraceptive forms interfere with a fertilized ovum’s implantation in the uterus, resulting, the schools argue, in an abortion.