Oregon Right to Life (ORTL) scored a victory for the unborn last Friday when a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in its favor.
In June, ORTL filed a complaint arguing that the Appeals Court should throw out a Clinton-appointed district judge’s ruling last year that denied its request to be exempt from a 2017 Oregon state law that would have forced it to pay for abortions and contraception. Lois Anderson, ORTL’s executive director, argued that covering abortions via health insurance was an attack on their religious liberty.
“The attempt by the state to force Oregon Right to Life to finance abortion — the precise human rights violation we are dedicated to opposing — is blatantly unconstitutional and obviously unjust,” she said this past summer.
Trump-appointed Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote the 2-1 majority opinion for the Appeals Court. Obama-appointee Circuit Judge John Owens agreed with him that the case should be sent back to the lower court for further investigation. Senior Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder, an 84-year-old Jimmy Carter appointee, dissented, claiming that the group was not inherently a religious organization.
