The Reproductive Health Non-discrimination Act (RHNDA), a District of Columbia law protecting employees’ right to make reproductive health decisions—including abortion, contraception and in vitro fertilization—without fear of retaliation from their employers, went into effect May 2 after becoming the subject of national controversy. RHNDA was passed by the DC Council and signed into law by DC mayor Muriel Bowser in January, but like all District laws it was subject to congressional review. Opponents, such as the Archdiocese of Washington, appealed to Congress to block the implementation of the law, citing First Amendment protections for religious freedom.

A letter from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops claimed that RHNDA “would compel religious institutions, faith-based organizations, and pro-life advocacy organizations to engage in certain behavior that seems intended to drive these institutions and organizations out of the District of Columbia.”

DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton responded to critics, saying, “The attack on the D.C. Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act, as it is called, needlessly pits reproductive freedom against freedom from discrimination,” according to CQ Roll Call. Glenn Northern, domestic program senior associate at Catholics for Choice and member of a coalition in support of the act, also rejected the opposition’s invocation of religious freedom, saying in a press conference, “It is wrong and insulting to mistake something so blatantly discriminatory, so clearly restrictive of some people’s consciences, for ‘freedom.’”

In a late vote on April 30, the House of Representatives voted to strike down the law, but the effort did not manage to obtain approvals from the Senate and the president in time to block it from going into effect. Norton praised the “help from the national coalition of organizations that worked so effectively with us” to ensure the law’s survival.