As a plan to promote abortion, it would have worked this way: Require the mostly faith-based crisis pregnancy centers to inform their clients of the availability of low-cost or free abortions.
But the law is before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday in the case National Institute of Family and Life Associates v. Becerra. The complaint is that the law infringes on the well-established court standard that the First Amendment’s freedom of speech includes the freedom not to carry a government message with which one disagrees.
Such legal demands already have been struck down by courts in cases in Austin, Texas; Montgomery County, Maryland; Baltimore; and New York City.
Nevertheless, California is before the Supreme Court in Washington Tuesday to argue that its demands are legitimate.
Its AB 775, adopted in 2015, forces pro-life pregnancy care centers “to provide free abortion advertising for the abortion industry,” according to the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the legal teams leading the fight against the state.
“The law requires licensed medical centers that offer free, pro-life help to pregnant women to post a disclosure saying that California provides free or low-cost abortion and contraception services. The disclosure must also include a phone number for a county office that refers women to Planned Parenthood and other abortionists. The law also forces unlicensed pregnancy centers to add large disclosures about their non-medical status in all advertisements, even if they provide no medical services,” the organization says.
“No one should be forced to provide free advertising for the abortion industry – least of all pro-life pregnancy centers,” said Michael Farris, chief of the ADL. “Yet here, the government designed this statute to single out pro-life pregnancy centers and force them to use their walls as billboards to point the way to abortion. Information about abortion is widely available, and the government has many other ways it can do what it wants to without trampling on the First Amendment protected freedoms of pro-life advocates.”
A prayer vigil is scheduled to take place in front of the Supreme Court Monday night.
Michele Hendrickson of Students for Life discussed the significance.
“Students from all across the country are paying attention to this case and coming to the Supreme Court in support of pregnancy resource centers,” she said. “They understand this law is yet another tactic from the abortion industry to attack life-saving centers and forcing them to violate their core beliefs and mission.”
Brandi Swindell is founder of Stanton Healthcare, a life-affirming women’s clinic.
“Stanton Healthcare provides professional, compassionate and quality healthcare to women, especially those struggling with unexpected pregnancies. For the state of California to force and tell us how we are to operate a professional women’s health clinic is a clear violation of the First Amendment and shows a complete disdain for women and professional standards of medical care,” she said.
Nearly two dozen states and about one-quarter of the members of Congress have filed briefs in support of the crisis pregnancy centers, which offer help ranging from food and clothes to housing and transportation to the doctor.
The district judge in California supported the law as did the frequently reversed Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
There are several lawsuits that will end up being decided by the ruling, as multiple centers took California to court after it imposed its abortion-promotion strategy.
Liberty Counsel, which is involved in one of the cases, pointed out the state requirement for official notices about nearby abortionists that they be printed in 48-point type in up to 12 languages.
“We are hopeful this forced speech law will be overturned by the Supreme Court,” said Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel. “The California law forces crisis pregnancy centers to speak a message that goes directly against their religious beliefs and mission to save lives. The First Amendment protects the right to speak and the right not to speak. To be forced to post state-prescribed notices in large font undermining the mission of the pregnancy centers is a shocking violation of the First Amendment.”
At the Federalist, commentator Mark Miller pointed out that the approximately 2,500 crisis-pregnancy centers across the nation put “pro-lifers’ money where their mouths are.”
“These facilities demonstrate that pro-lifers care about the child and mother before birth and after,” he wrote.
“The pro-choice movement fears these organizations because their existence undercuts the abortion hegemony pro-choicers seek,” he said. “This case asks whether the government can require licensed professionals to advertise services the government wishes to promote but the professionals do not.”
He said “the real reason [for the law] is to force pro-lifers to pay homage to the pro-choice regime. But that reason violates the First Amendment.”
Miller said America is “waking up to the reality of abortion is the reckoning to come.”
“Laws that prohibit partial-birth abortion have moved us towards that reckoning, because they forced society to face the reality of one type of abortion procedure. The recent wave of laws prohibiting dismemberment abortions will advance us further still. And then, when the reckoning finally comes, the law will follow where it should have in Roe. That is what the pro-abortion advocates know, and it is why they now try, with laws like the California FACT Act, to force pro-life advocates, against their will, to instruct women on where to obtain abortions. The pro-abortion rights advocates think if they force pro-lifers to tacitly endorse abortion in this manner, they can stave off the reckoning.”
Last month, the state of California submitted a brief in the case insisting it couldn’t adequately promote abortion without help from the pregnancy centers.
Here’s a look at the reasons the fight is going on:
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Despite “statewide marketing campaigns, community mobilization, provider training, targeted efforts to reach vulnerable populations” many eligible Californians don’t know about their publicly funded health-care options, the state argued.
The fact that there were nearly 150,000 abortions in California last year suggests that they do know.
California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, actively promotes abortion, even to the point of filing criminal charges against two pro-life activists who filmed, in public locations, abortion industry participants bragging about selling the body parts of unborn children.
The cases, centering on the undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress in 2015, are still in the courts.
The California law, ADF said, “forces non-profit pregnancy centers to provide free advertising for the abortion industry.”
“California’s brief continues to make clear that the state is targeting pro-life pregnancy centers because it disagrees with what they say and do to love and support women and their babies,” ADF said.
It was recently reported in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin that the federal government, in an analysis, said the ruling could have a significant impact on speech rights and related laws and regulations beyond the abortion issue.
“The parties in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra dispute whether California’s Reproductive FACT Act is a viewpoint – or content-based restriction on speech subject to strict scrutiny (and thus presumptively invalid) or a professional or commercial regulation subject to less exacting scrutiny,” the government analysis says.
“The path the court chooses could have implications for lawmakers both in the context of family planning or pregnancy-related services and, more broadly, in the regulation of professional and commercial activities.”
The most recent development in the issue came when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Baltimore ordinance imposing that requirement.
The court found that the ordinance violated the free speech clause of the First Amendment.
The opinion said: “The compelled speech at issue here raises particularly troubling First Amendment concerns. At bottom, the disclaimer portrays abortion as one among a menu of morally equivalent choices. While that may be the city’s view, it is not the center’s.”
The ruling also found the ordinance was an impermissible attempt by Baltimore officials “to use compelled speech as a weapon to run its ideological foes into the ground.”
