By Bob Allen
Anti-abortion groups with offices in Washington, D.C., — including the Southern Baptist Convention’s public-policy arm — have vowed to defy a new city ordinance barring discriminating against women based on their reproductive health choices.
Hours after the U.S. Senate allowed District of Columbia Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act passed in February by the City Council to take effect, a coalition of D.C.-based pro-life organizations and religious ministries announced it will disobey the law.
Organizations including the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission — which has offices both in Washington and in Nashville, Tenn. — said amending D.C.’s 1977 Human Rights Act barring discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodation or education solves no “real problem.”
The groups called it an “attack” on pro-life and religious organizations that make the District their home.
“RHNDA is aimed squarely at the freedom of our organizations to draw our workforces from among those who share our foundational commitment to the sanctity of human life,” the groups said in an open letter. “RHNDA is also aimed squarely at our freedom to purchase and provide employee health plans that comport with our pro-life beliefs.”
“We are nonsectarian pro-life organizations and religious ministries that make the nation’s capital our home,” the letter said. “Despite the enactment of this unjust law we will continue to hire employees who share our commitment to the dignity of every member of the human family.”
“We will not abandon the purpose of our organizations in order to comply with this illegal and unjust law,” it concluded. “We will vigorously resist any effort under RHNDA to violate our constitutionally protected fundamental rights.”
ERLC President Russell Moore said in a statement quoted by Baptist Press the new law “is not about reproductive health or protecting people against discrimination — it is an unjust targeting law designed to steamroll the consciences of pro-life citizens and organizations operating in the District of Columbia.”
“This joint statement makes it clear that we see through this craftiness and recognize it for what it is: a gross repudiation of religious liberty in our nation’s capital,” he said.
Joining the ELRC in the coalition were Alliance Defending Freedom, Americans United for Life, March for Life, Concerned Women for America and the Susan B. Anthony List. In February the ERLC joined the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in opposing both RHNDA and a new human rights amendment.
The new law bans job discrimination based on “reproductive health decisions,” defined as “a decision by an employee, an employee’s dependent, or an employee’s spouse related to the use or intended use of a particular drug, device, or medical service, including the use or intended use of contraception or fertility control or the planned or intended initiation or termination of a pregnancy.”
The Human Rights Act of 1977 also includes a provision allowing any religious or political organization to give “preference to persons of the same religion or political persuasion as is calculated by the organization to promote the religious or political principles for which it is established or maintained.”
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