The Sisters of Life — a Catholic community of religious women dedicated to helping pregnant women in need — are celebrating a legal victory in New York after challenging a law that they said allowed government officials to access private internal documents, including sensitive information about the women they serve.
“We are profoundly grateful for this victory, which protects our right to continue to uphold and defend the beauty and strength of women!” the sisters wrote in a Nov. 8 newsletter. “So we invite you to join us in rejoicing in this victory and praising the Lord for His goodness and mercy!”
The State of New York agreed to a court order granted Wednesday that protects the sisters’ information in a settlement of a federal lawsuit, Sisters of Life v. McDonald. The news comes after the sisters, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, filed a complaint last year in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
“This order is a win for the Sisters and the women they serve,” Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of Becket, a legal institute dedicated to religious liberty, said in a press statement. “The government never should have enacted this law, and we are thrilled that it ends with a federal court order that the State should just leave the Sisters alone while they do their important work.”
Founded by the late Cardinal John O’Connor in 1991, the New York-based Sisters of Life, profess four vows: poverty, chastity, obedience, and “to protect and enhance the sacredness of human life.”
Among other things, they dedicate their lives to God by serving women vulnerable to abortion, providing life-affirming support to pregnant and parenting women in need, hosting retreats and holy hours, evangelizing, performing college-student outreach, and offering help to women who suffer after abortion.
An unconstitutional law
The sisters’ lawsuit challenged a New York law authorizing the commissioner of the New York State Department of Health to access internal data and information from life-affirming pregnancy centers in order to conduct a study and issue a report “examining the unmet health and resource needs facing pregnant women in New York and the impact of limited service pregnancy centers.”
The law went into effect two weeks before the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade, which previously legalized abortion nationwide.
“All of the Act’s intrusive and burdensome disclosure requirements turn on whether an organization is willing to ‘refer for … abortion care,'” the sisters’ complaint reads. “That definitional trigger is plainly predicated on the content of an organization’s speech; it is also plainly unconstitutional.”
Their complaint asked the court to declare the law in violation of the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
“The Sisters’ relationships of trust and confidence with pregnant women are chilled by the government’s claimed ability to obtain documents and information about those women and their conversations with the Sisters,” the complaint reads. “The harm is especially acute as to the Sisters’ relationships with undocumented and other vulnerable women, who are frequently sensitive to any risk of being reported to the government.”
The new court order especially impacts the sisters’ Visitation Mission located at St. Andrew’s Church in lower Manhattan, where they offer free support and resources to pregnant women in need.
“As Sisters of Life, it’s our privilege to walk alongside each woman who comes to us and to stand in solidarity with her, helping her to move in freedom, not in fear,” Sister Maris Stella, the vicar general of the Sisters of Life, said in the Becket press statement. “In over 30 years of serving women in the State of New York, we have learned that what a woman really needs is to be seen, heard, and believed in, which is why we are committed to providing the necessary emotional, practical, and spiritual support for her to flourish.”
“We are called to bring hope, comfort, and joy to women who feel they have nowhere else to turn,” she added. “The judge’s order will protect us as we continue our ministry.”
A legal analysis
At Becket, Rienzi called the court order a “big victory for the sisters.”
“New York had asserted something really outrageous, which is that they could get access to the documents of people just because they’re pro-life counselors,” he told Our Sunday Visitor. “We went to court because the sisters wanted to get a court order that New York is not allowed to do that to them — New York is not allowed to just say, ‘I’d like to go through all your papers.'”
On Wednesday, he said, the sisters received that court order.
“The end result of this lawsuit is precisely what we asked for when we started, which is: We wanted an order from the court that they cannot demand our papers, they can’t demand information about the women that we help, they can’t demand information about what we think or what we talk about.”
He found New York’s response somewhat surprising, he added.
“Even though it made a big deal about this law when they passed it, New York ultimately just gave up the fight,” he said. “In the end, they just agreed to the federal court entering this order saying that they can’t do any of these things.”
Rienzi addressed whether the law could still affect other life-affirming pregnancy centers.
“Theoretically, it could,” he said. “In reality, I would say New York has shown it has no will or desire to have a fight about this.”
He highlighted the ministry of the sisters.
“It’s a shame that we ever get to a moment in the world where the government is looking to hassle the Sisters of Life as opposed to just saying what we should all say to them which is, ‘Thank you so much for taking care of people,'” he concluded.
New York State Catholic Conference responds
Kristen Curran, director of government relations for the New York State Catholic Conference, which represents the Catholic bishops of New York in public policy matters, shared why Catholics nationwide should care about this victory.
“Despite victory in the Dobbs decision, the pro-life community is facing new challenges presented by a galvanized abortion movement,” Curran told Our Sunday Visitor. “Now more than ever, it is so important that we come together to support women and babies.”
She added: “This settlement is a critical step toward our ability to do that, and to encourage others to do the same.”
In a separate press statement, Curran applauded the news.
“We join the Sisters of Life in giving thanks to God that New York State has agreed to exclude them from the anti-woman pregnancy center study,” she said in a press release. “The agreed-upon court order correctly recognizes the rights of the Sisters to continue their invaluable and critical ministries.”
Curran condemned the law at issue, saying that it “weaponizes the Health Department against pro-life pregnancy centers and the women and babies they serve.”
“We celebrate with the Sisters of Life,” she added, “and continue to pray that the entire pregnancy center study will be abandoned, so that all of the people doing good work to serve women and babies may continue to do so without harassment.”
