Tomorrow Oklahoma Wesleyan University will be filing a lawsuit against the United States Department of Health and Human Services, as well as its secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. The premise of our suit is this: As an evangelical Christian university owned and operated by The Wesleyan Church of North America, OKWU cannot and will not comply with any provisions of the Affordable Care Act that require us to pay for abortion services or abortion-inducing drugs. More specifically, Oklahoma Wesleyan does not provide its employees with health insurance covering post-fertilization abortifacient drugs that, by definition, can and often do terminate pregnancy.

Why are we doing this?

We are filing suit because we believe in the United States Constitution and its First Amendment. We take seriously the words that “Congress shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise of religion.” We, therefore, believe our religion, i.e. Wesleyan Doctrine and Discipline, cannot be infringed upon. We believe that if the definition of human life is not a religious discussion then nothing is. We believe that the protection of every human being “from conception to completion” is the responsibility of all Christians and we cannot accept any law prohibiting the free exercise of such a religious obligation.

We are filing suit because we believe in the Declaration of Independence. We believe in the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” We believe that all men and women, boys and girls are “created equal” and that we are all “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.” We believe that first among these rights is the “right to life.”

We are filing suit because we believe God defines what is living and what is dead; you and I do not. We believe human beings are unique and exceptional and, unlike other creatures, we are made in the likeness of God. We believe that the life of all people regardless of their status, age, race, gender, vitality, or handicap should be protected and defended. It is God and God alone who can give and take human life.

We are filing suit because we believe in the dignity of women. We are tired of and offended by their objectification. We believe that girls should be honored and respected and not used as objects of sexual recreation and conquest. We believe that women should be respected and not treated as toys that can simply be purged of the “inconvenient” and the “unwanted” after men shamelessly use and abuse them for their own selfish whims.

We are filing suit because we believe in women’s health. We are horrified by the pandemic nature of sexually transmitted diseases in our culture. We abhor the silence pertaining to the disproportionate impact these STDs have on females. A government and educational community that continues to promote the sexual exploitation of women, even after being well aware of the negative health implications of “consequence-free” sexual behavior, saddens us. We believe it is a misogynist tragedy and medical crisis for 45 percent of America’s young women to presently be infected with HPV. We believe that obscuring the physiological consequences of sex is blatantly sexist because of the disparate burden it places on the woman, her body, her career, her spirit, her relationships, and her future.

We are filing suit because we believe in racial justice. We stand opposed to organizations such as Planned Parenthood, whose founder Margaret Sanger openly promoted abortion as a primary means of cleansing culture of those she defined as “colored” and “whose progeny” she argued was “tainted” by “objectionable traits.” We believe the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandates are nothing short of the perpetuation of Sanger’s eugenic dream. We believe that the soaring abortion rates among black women are deplorable. We believe that the aborting of over 13 million black children over the past 40 years is one of the most racist and unjust acts of modern times.

We are filing suit because we believe in privacy. We believe it is nothing short of astonishing that the federal government would ever presume to intrude into our private lives and our bedrooms and, thereby, tell any United States citizen, man or woman, what contraceptives he or she is required by law to pay for and purchase.

At Oklahoma Wesleyan University, we are filing suit against the Obama Administration, Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, and the Affordable Care Act because we believe. We believe whether you are Catholic or Jewish or whether you are Mormon, Methodist, Mennonite, or Muslim that you should be free to follow your faith in matters of morality and contraception. We believe women should be free from any obligation to pay for a drug they find immoral and will never use. We believe that the racial genocide at the hands of a racist abortion industry must be stopped. We believe in personal privacy that no judge, legislator, or President has any right to violate. We believe our nation’s girls and their sexuality should be treated with dignity rather than being degraded. We believe in a culture of life and not a culture of death.

We are filing suit because we believe God is God, not the government — and that “we must obey God rather than men.”

[Dr. Piper is president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University.]