Pilot who offered flights to women for medical care fired from seminary job

About three weeks after the US supreme court last year struck down the federal right to abortion, Greg Williams, a volunteer pilot for a group that provides free flights to people who need to travel for medical care, posted a Facebook message.

Williams, 40, has no real legal recourse to compel St Joseph to rehire him, according to lawyers he consulted and attorneys interviewed by the Guardian. Louisiana is an at-will employment state, which means employers can dismiss workers for any reason that is not blatantly unconstitutional.

Greg Williams said he was now speaking up about the end of his seven-year tenure at St Joseph to shine a light on the harsh reality of at-will employment.

He said he found the college hypocritical, because it is part of a church which spent decades trying to suppress information about child sexual abuse by its clerics. The archdiocese which includes St Joseph, and which serves about half a million Catholics, has identified more than 80 priests and deacons strongly suspected of abusing minors.

Christian but not Catholic, he landed a role teaching at St Joseph, near Covington, Louisiana, in 2015. The seminary had no problems with his volunteer work or other things that set his lifestyle apart from those of his students, including that he planned to start a family with his wife, Macey.

Initial reactions were positive.

Williams said he found new work at an Episcopal church. Since his dismissal from St Joseph, he said, he had flown about 15 people through Pilots for Patients.