The announcement was made earlier this month in response to a long contentious element of the Affordable Care Act that would include coverage for contraception.
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Wheaton College, as well as other Christian nonprofits and businesses such as arts-and-crafts retailer Hobby Lobby, has challenged Obamacare’s contraception mandate in court in an attempt to avoid any form of coverage – even if the school were not required to pay for the contraception – filing a lawsuit in 2012.
About a quarter of Wheaton College’s 3,000 students will lose their healthcare coverage and have to shop for new plans “just weeks before their coverage ends”, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Chelsen said protecting the case is important because the government is telling the school it has to offer something it finds “morally objectionable”.
Wheaton college’s July 10 announcement comes a little over a week after the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against giving Wheaton a preliminary injunction that would have exempted the college from having to offer its students health plans that include emergency abortifacient drugs. “And their only connection to abortion is that they can prevent the need for one”.
“What really breaks my heart is that there are real people that are affected by our decision”, said Chelsen in a recording of the discussion acquired by the Tribune.
“I would argue, it’s a violation of the trust” which “students and their parents placed in Wheaton College when they chose to invest their time and money there”, Stevens, who holds a prestigious bachelor’s degree in journalism from Eastern Illinois University, wrote.
“I acknowledge that students have been hurt by this decision and I regret that”, Chelsen added.
The college, whose Web site was inexplicably down Thursday, has been busy taking plenty of heat on its Facebook page from users noting, “Pregnancy and childbirth was the #1 killer of women in all of human history”.
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While a provision in the law allows for groups opposed to birth control to opt out of providing the benefit if they allow the insurer to provide the coverage directly, Wheaton objected to a requirement that it notify the government of its objections.
