These Catholic nuns took on the state of New York — and won

As the country prepared for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022, New York passed a unique package of abortion-related legislation aimed at safeguarding abortion rights in the state and protecting pregnant women.

“Reproductive rights are human rights, and today we are signing landmark legislation to further protect them and all who wish to access them in New York State,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in a statement on June 13, 2022, the day she signed the package of related policies.

Among other steps, the package empowered and instructed state officials to study “limited service pregnancy centers” that do not refer women to abortion providers to determine whether they provide accurate information and adequate health care and then produce a report on their work.

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Pregnancy services offered by the Sisters of Life, a community of Catholic nuns, were among the services affected by the pregnancy center law. The policy gave New York officials the right to request and then look through the Sisters’ private information.

“The law would have allowed government officials access to the Sisters’ most sensitive internal documents and forced them to turn over private information that would jeopardize their trusting relationships with women in need,” according to the Becket Fund for Religious Freedom, which represents the Sisters of Life.

In September 2022, the Sisters of Life sued the commissioner of New York’s state health department, arguing that the state’s new policy regarding pregnancy centers “violates the Constitution and illegally interferes with the Sisters’ ministry to pregnant women.”

This week, after just over a year of legal wrangling, the Sisters of Life and New York officials announced that the lawsuit had been settled.

New York agreed not to demand information about the Sisters’ work with pregnant women, nor punish the Sisters of Life for refusing to freely disclose such information, Becket explained in a press release.

In the release, Sister Maris Stella, vicar general of the Sisters of Life, said that the settlement will enable the nuns to continue doing what they were called by God to do.

“We are called to bring hope, comfort, and joy to women who feel they have nowhere else to turn. The judge’s order will protect us as we continue our ministry,” she said.

The settlement order does not apply to the work of other pregnancy centers, meaning that New York will move forward with plans to study the services offered by pregnant women by abortion opponents, according to Crux.

“The order will end when the health department publishes the report mandated by the bill,” Crux reported.