Pro-abortion state and local governments are filing lawsuits to shut down pro-life pregnancy help organizations that encourage women considering an abortion to seek alternatives.
Support services include pregnancy testing, parental education, and housing assistance. PHOs operate help centers, maternity homes, adoption agencies, and social services agencies.
Some PHOs promote abortion pill reversal services for women who change their minds midway through a medication abortion, while others provide sidewalk counseling in which supporters approach pregnant women outside abortion clinics to discuss alternatives.
Attorneys at public interest law firms say blue states have escalated their campaigns against the groups since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. In Dobbs, the U.S. Supreme Court held there was no constitutional right to abortion and returned regulation of the procedure to the states.
Blue States
Peter Breen, executive vice president at the Thomas More Society, said the states most active in pursuing PHOs are California, New York, and Illinois.“The blue states are absolutely cracking down on pro-life advocacy, peaceful First Amendment-protected speech and on providing help to pregnant women in need,” said Breen, a former Republican Floor Leader in the Illinois House of Representatives, where he served from 2015 to 2019.
“They want to now forbid any sort of dissent from their abortion agenda,” he told The Epoch Times. “The pro-life movement is not going to take it lying down.”
After the Illinois Legislature passed a bill, and it was enacted as law, declaring “pregnancy center speech to be misinformation,” the Thomas More Society challenged it in court and prevailed, he said.
In August of that year, Johnston called the law “likely unconstitutional because it is a blatant example of government taking the side of whose speech is sanctionable and whose speech is immunized … SB1909 is likely classic content and viewpoint discrimination prohibited by the First Amendment.”
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul argued the law was needed because he had “witnessed deceptive crisis pregnancy center tactics firsthand on a visit to tour a Planned Parenthood center in Illinois.”
There were “people who appeared as though they might work there … outside attempting to divert patients away from the health center,” he said.
Bubble Zones
In a separate case, a group called Coalition Life is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate a Carbondale, Illinois, law that forbids protests and outreach within a so-called bubble zone outside abortion clinics. The petition was filed in July. It is unclear when the court will consider the petition.
The group argues that the local 2023 law violates sidewalk counselors’ First Amendment right to approach women near abortion facilities to advise them of alternatives.
The local disorderly conduct ordinance makes it illegal—within 100 feet of a hospital, medical clinic, or health care facility—to come within eight feet of another person with the intention of distributing leaflets, displaying signs, or participating in protest, education, or counseling.
Staff and patients of abortion clinics had reported “frequent acts of intimidation, threats, and interference from individuals protesting abortion access and services.”
In Hill v. Colorado (2000), the Supreme Court entrenched the idea of these so-called bubble zones outside abortion clinics.
The court upheld a Colorado law that forbids pro-life activists from coming within eight feet of another person within a 100-foot zone around a health care facility without that person’s consent. The court ruled that activists who wished to express their opinions were free to do so outside the designated zone.
Coalition Life, which is active in sidewalk counseling outside abortion clinics in Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois, sued Carbondale, arguing that the local law is unconstitutional.
Pro-life groups argue that laws restricting free speech outside abortion clinics deserve to be reexamined in light of the Dobbs ruling. Because the decision meant abortion was no longer considered protected by the Constitution, laws that limit advocacy outside abortion clinics need to be curbed, according to these groups.
Breen said Hill v. Colorado was a “bad decision.”
In July 2023, U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn dismissed the lawsuit against Carbondale’s bubble zone law, holding that the lawsuit was barred by Hill v. Colorado.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the City Attorney’s office in Carbondale but received no reply by publication time.
Represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, volunteer sidewalk counselor and occupational therapist Debra Vitagliano challenged a Westchester County, New York, bubble zone ordinance. The law was enacted after the Dobbs decision.
“A pregnant woman in need deserves to know that she and her child will be loved, defended, and supported,” Vitagliano said after the court ruled.
“Westchester County threatened to put me in jail for over a year, just for speaking a message of hope to women outside abortion clinics. … No government official should try to outlaw compassionate conversations on a public sidewalk,” she said.
Lawsuit Against Massachusetts
Olivia Summers, senior litigation counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), told The Epoch Times that PHOs “are definitely under attack ... because they’re on the front lines of the abortion battle.”“While pregnancy centers have always been a target, they’re now increasingly the targets, because they’re the only thing that’s standing between women and abortion clinics.”
The campaign, which partners with pro-choice groups, uses emotionally charged language, saying PHOs “cause harm,” and “put your health at risk.”
Massachusetts is touting its campaign against PHOs “as the first of its kind in the nation,” and now New Jersey, New York, and other states on the East Coast are considering copying them, Summers said.
“So we wanted this to be a first-of-its-kind lawsuit “to counteract what they’re doing there because we want this to stop.”
The state has not yet responded to the complaint in court. The court gave Massachusetts a deadline of Nov. 12 to file its brief.
The Epoch Times asked the office of the Massachusetts attorney general to comment but no reply had been received by publication time.
Abortion Pill Reversal
Meanwhile, on Sept. 24, a federal judge temporarily blocked the New York Attorney General’s efforts to prevent PHOs from promoting abortion pill reversal services.The plaintiffs, Summit Life Center Inc., Evergreen Association Inc., and EMC Frontline Pregnancy Centers, who are represented by the Thomas More Society, say their statements about the safety and desirability of abortion pill reversals are true.
The state says that the groups are misinforming the public about the abortion pill reversal protocol. Some pregnant women opt for reversal when they change their minds about proceeding with an abortion after taking one of the two pills required in the medication abortion process.
A chemical abortion generally involves the use of mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone, and misoprostol, which induces contractions.
In the abortion pill reversal protocol, a large dose of progesterone is administered to the pregnant woman, counteracting the mifepristone, which would otherwise prevent the progesterone from being absorbed by the womb and causing contractions.
In August, the court temporarily blocked the state from enforcing the same legal provisions against three other pregnancy help organizations known as the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NILFA), Gianna’s House, and Options Care Center. Alliance Defending Freedom is serving as legal counsel for those plaintiffs.
The Epoch Times asked the office of the attorney general of New York to comment but no reply was received by publication time.
California
California enacted a law requiring PHO-run centers to advise people they were not licensed by the state and that information about abortion was available from state-supported clinics.Daniel Schmid, senior litigation counsel at Liberty Counsel, said the state forced the centers “to put all kind of warning labels, all kind of statements that the state crafted, like that free abortions were available and that the state would pay for it.”He said his firm argued that PHOs were being forced to engage in speech that was “fundamentally at odds with their mission.”
Liberty Counsel took on the case and the Supreme Court held in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra (2018) that the California law violated the First Amendment.
In July, Culture of Life Family Services Inc. sued California’s Attorney General in federal court over efforts to shut down abortion pill reversal services.
The federal action was initiated after the state filed suit in Alameda County Superior Court in September 2023 against Heartbeat International, a pro-life group, and RealOptions Obria, which operates five crisis pregnancy centers, claiming the two organizations used fraudulent and misleading claims to promote abortion pill reversal.
“HBI and RealOptions took advantage of pregnant patients at a deeply vulnerable time in their lives, using false and misleading claims to lure them in and mislead them about a potentially risky procedure,” Bonta said.
The lawsuit aims to halt the groups’ “predatory and unlawful behavior,” he said.
Culture of Life, which operates three state-licensed community health clinics in San Diego County, wants the state court to declare that abortion pill reversal is lawful and protected by the U.S. Constitution. It is also seeking damages and an injunction against Bonta in the suit filed by the Thomas More Society.
The Epoch Times asked the office of the California attorney general to comment but no reply was received as of publication time.
