A pro-choice pilot who offered flights to women needing medical care shortly after the Supreme Court ended the federal right to abortion was fired a week later from the seminary where he worked for advocating a “position contrary to the official teaching of the Catholic Church.”

“If any women need to make an unexpected trip from the south to, say, Illinois or New Mexico or Virginia for reasons that are none of my business, I can provide safe, private air transport,” wrote 40-year-old Greg Williams in a private Facebook group that provides free flights to people needing to travel for medical treatment.

He was fired from the Saint Joseph Seminary College near New Orleans, where he taught Latin and Greek, a week later, even though his post did not explicitly mention abortion.

“It’s a hell of a thing to have [the church] have an official letter addressed to me saying I’m doing heinous evil,” Williams, 40, said. “It’s like—what are you talking about?” He added that the firing meant he and his wife had to delay plans to have a child of their own.

“I can’t afford it,” he said. “You want to talk about pro-life? They’ve literally prevented me and my wife from starting a family.”

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.