About a quarter of the students were on the school’s health coverage.

The Chicago Tribune reports.

Wheaton College ends student health coverage over contraception mandate

Wheaton College will stop providing any health insurance for students to avoid complying with the government’s controversial contraception mandate.

The decision, announced July 10 and going into effect Friday, will end health care coverage for more than 700 undergraduate and graduate students who were enrolled in the program — about a quarter of the student body.

Officials of the west suburban evangelical school said the government’s compromise provision, which would require them to notify the government of their religious objections to FDA-approved emergency contraception, would prompt the school’s insurance carrier to provide the coverage directly to students without involving the college. Pulling the trigger on that action and providing the health care plan in the first place would force Wheaton to violate its religious beliefs, officials said.

“When you order somebody to provide something for the beneficiaries of my plan, you are using my plan,” said Mark Rienzi, a lawyer for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a Washington-based law firm representing Wheaton. “For the government to do that is to effectively change the terms of the plan.”