ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – The Little Sisters of the Poor in north St. Louis are celebrating after the Supreme Court of the U.S. refuses to order them to provide abortion-related medical coverage for their nursing home staff.
The order here runs an elderly care facility for about 100 seniors, staffed by eight nuns and about 125 lay people.
“We just can’t go against our conscience and what we felt is the right thing to do,” said Mother Superior Sister Gonzague Castro.
The order faced the potential of millions of dollars in IRS fines for refusing to provide medical coverage to its employees for contraception, sterilization, and birth control drugs that may cause abortions.
Mother Superior Sister Gonzague Castro relieved with high court decision. (Kevin Killeen/KMOX)
“We know that there is no way that we cold pay those fines,” Castro said. “We take care of the poor and we barely have enough to function.”
Gonzague said none of the lay employees here have complained about the lack of abortion coverage.
“That has never come up,” she said. “I think they know when they come to work here that we don’t cover that. There are other avenues where they can obtain that.”
The court’s decision essentially tells the state courts to work out some alternative to accommodate the issues of conscience raised by the nuns.
“The parties on remand should be afforded an opportunity to arrive at an approach going forward that accommodates petitioners’ religious exercise while at the same time ensuring that women covered by petitioners’ health plans ‘receive full and equal health coverage, including contraceptive coverage,’” the justices said in their decision.
Gonzague said the nuns will continue praying for a good outcome as the case works its way through the lower courts.
“We’re an international congregation all over the world,” Castro said. “We have about 182 facilities world-wide, and all our sisters in residence and in other countries have been praying for success in this.”
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