Catholic university in Illinois still covers 'abortion care' with campus insurance

(The College Fix) Loyola University Chicago students can get help killing their preborn babies through the health insurance plan at their Catholic school.

The Jesuit Catholic university continues to cover “abortion care services” through its campus health plan according to the certificate of coverage published by UnitedHealthcare. Loyola  has covered abortions since at least the 2022-2023 school year.

The health insurance coverage stands in contrast to the teachings of the Catholic Church, which has always opposed the intentional killing of innocent preborn babies.

 The Catholic Church has always “affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion.” Abortion is “gravely contrary to the moral law,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church states.

The university’s media team has not responded to three requests for comment in the past month. The College Fix asked whether Loyola was concerned that its health plan communicates to students that abortion was morally permissible.

The Archdiocese of Chicago declined to comment on this issue and directed The Fix to ask the university for comment.  

The archdiocese has previously declined to comment on a similar situation at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.

The Midwest Jesuit Province also declined to comment.

However, a leader of a national Catholic organization criticized the university for helping students abort their babies.

“This scandal comes as no surprise” seeing that “Jesuit institutions, contrary to the specific prohibitions of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, routinely give awards, honors and platforms to pro-abortion public figures, and have done so for decades,” Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle told The Fix via email.

Doyle listed examples of such instances at Jesuit-administered Boston College, Boston College Law School, Georgetown University, and Nativity School. “Loyola is no different,” he said.

“By utilizing this healthcare plan, the leadership of Loyola is indeed sending to its student body a […]  message that the willful murder of the innocent—a sin that crieth to heaven for vengeance—is morally permissible,” he said.

Doyle’s comments were in reference to four specific grave sins of the Catholic Church deemed particularly immoral. These are, according to Catholic Answers, “murder,” “sodomy, “oppression of the poor,” and “defrauding workers of their just wages.”

Doyle called the Jesuit colleges, universities, and secondary schools “secularized, culturally conforming institutions” that “reflects the aggressive modernism of their parent religious order, the Society of Jesus.”

“Like the pre-Reformation Church, Jesuit higher education cries out for reform,” he said.

Loyola is not the only Catholic university that facilitates procedures for students, even if the Catholic Church has condemned them as immoral.

About 1 in 4 Jesuit Catholic universities cover so-called “gender-affirming” treatment, which seeks to make men look like women and vice versa, according to an investigation by The Fix in 2022.

As The Fix previously reported, Fordham University covers “[m]edically necessary surgical, hormone replacement therapy, and counseling,” according to the benefits summary document of a health insurance plan provided by Aetna. 

It also covers “elective abortions,” despite the Catholic Church’s stance against the killing of preborn babies.

Boston College covers “breast reduction, breast augmentation, breast implants or breast prosthetic devices” only for the purposes of “gender affirming or gender dysphoria treatment,” according to an insurance certificate from Harvard Pilgrim HealthCare.