Two Philadelphia residents backed by a conservative regulation agency sued town and Mayor Jim Kenney this week, claiming a deliberate six-figure donation to an abortion fund violates state regulation.

The plaintiffs, Charles and Theresa Kuhar, requested a Courtroom of Frequent Pleas choose to halt town’s plans to donate $500,000 to the Abortion Liberation Fund of PA, which helps sufferers pay for an abortion if they can’t use insurance coverage to cowl the process or can’t in any other case afford it.

Kenney’s administration introduced earlier this month that town would disburse the donation to ALF-PA, and the money would come from the taxpayer-funded normal fund. He mentioned in a press release that the donation was a technique town might “assist Philadelphians of their elementary proper to bodily autonomy.”

Pennsylvania regulation has lengthy prohibited using state funds — or federal funds allotted by the state — for abortion care, with exceptions for rape, incest, or in instances when the being pregnant might result in demise. The town doesn’t have a municipal ordinance banning such makes use of of taxpayer {dollars}.

The plaintiffs argue that in utilizing money from its normal fund, Philadelphia can’t show it didn’t use state or state-appropriated federal funds to make the donation, mentioned Thomas Breth, a western Pennsylvania lawyer representing the plaintiffs. Breth is a particular counsel for the Chicago-based Thomas Extra Society, a Catholic regulation agency that takes instances involving cultural points like abortion and same-sex marriage.

A metropolis spokesperson declined to reply questions, saying town doesn’t typically touch upon pending litigation.

» READ MORE: Philly is donating half-a-million {dollars} to a gaggle that helps sufferers pay for abortions

Frequent Pleas Decide Joshua Roberts scheduled a listening to for Aug. 31. He wrote the plaintiffs should be ready to show the funds in query had been state or federal funds.

Kenney’s announcement of the donation happened six weeks after the U.S. Supreme Courtroom overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade, ending a nationwide constitutional proper to an abortion. The ruling didn’t change the regulation in Pennsylvania, the place the process stays authorized by way of about 24 weeks right into a being pregnant.

ALF-PA, which is a part of a nationwide community, was based in 1985 after the Normal Meeting voted to ban using Medicaid funding for abortions.

The group estimates that out-of-pocket prices for an abortion can vary from $400 to $3,000. It says it’s supplied monetary help to greater than 35,000 folks because it was created, together with 3,200 folks searching for abortions in Pennsylvania over the course of the final fiscal yr.