Wheaton College will no longer renew its students' health insurance, which expires Friday, after a federal appeals court denied its temporary exemption from Obamacare's contraceptive mandate.
The cancelling of the health insurance will affect about a quarter of the college's 3,000 students, who will have to find other insurance plans for themselves, Chicago Tribune reports.
The college's decision was announced to the student body on July 10. Paul Chelsen, vice president of student development, said that while he was heartbroken about how people are affected by the decision, the issue the school was facing was not just about student health insurance.
"If we don't win this case, the implications down the road in terms of what the government will tell us what we can and cannot do will be potentially more significant," Chelsen said in a livestream student information session.
Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian liberal arts college, filed a case against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on grounds of religious objection to Obamacare's emergency contraception coverage. The college requested a temporary religious exemption to the contraceptive mandate while the case is still pending in court, but the request was denied early this month.
Many faith-based organizations are opposing the contraceptive mandate stipulated within Obamacare, saying it is an attack on their religious freedom. Obamacare's emergency contraceptive coverage includes morning after pills, intrauterine devices and other forms of contraception, particularly those that prevent a fertilized egg from implanting to the uterine wall, a mechanism that some evangelical Christian groups equate to abortion, according to Chicago Tribune.
Chelsen said Wheaton College is protecting its pending lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services.
"The reason protecting that case is so important is because basically what has happened is the government is telling us we have to offer something that we find morally objectionable," he explained.
"The College is considering all of its options and will explore the possibility of again offering a student health insurance plan in the future if circumstances allow us to do so in good conscience," Chelsen said, according to Campus Reform.
