A federal judge issued a ruling on Thursday temporarily barring New York Attorney General Letitia James from targeting pro-life groups in the state that promote reversing the effects of abortion pills.
James sued Heartbeat International and 11 pregnancy centers in May, accusing them of fraud, deceptive business practices, and falsely advertising treatments to reverse the effects of chemical abortions.
Soon after, the groups, the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, as well as two pregnancy centers, countersued James, accusing the attorney general of unfairly targeting them for their viewpoints and violating their free speech rights.
U.S. District Judge John Sinatra Jr. in Buffalo issued the preliminary injunction on Thursday, barring James and state attorneys from taking legal action against the groups and centers while the case plays out in federal court.
“The First Amendment protects plaintiffs’ right to speak freely about APR [abortion pill reversal] protocol and, more specifically, to say that it is safe and effective for a pregnant woman to use in consultation with her doctor,” Judge Sinatra wrote in a 36-page decision.
The judge found that the pro-life groups and the pregnancy centers are likely to prevail in their lawsuits. He also criticized James for moving too quickly to regulate speech.
“If ‘the First Amendment means anything, it means that regulating speech must be a last—not first—resort,’” Judge Sinatra wrote. “Yet ‘here it seems to have been the first strategy the Government thought to try.’”
The judge said that the pro-life groups promoting the abortion pill reversal can’t cause enough harm to warrant limiting speech because the treatment requires a doctor’s prescription.
Therefore, their speech would, at most, “encourage a woman to speak with her doctor about treatment options,” he added.
“The state fails to explain why forbidding speech about APR ‘was a necessary as opposed to a merely convenient means of achieving its interests,’” Judge Sinatra wrote.
The judge also disagreed with the state attorneys’ contention that the plaintiffs’ speech was commercial in nature.
“Nothing could be fundamentally less commercial than this speech about how a woman might save her pregnancy,” he wrote.
Chemical abortions, or medication abortions, involve taking two pills: mifepristone, which kills the foetus, and misoprostol, taken days later, which expels the remains. The second pill is typically used after a miscarriage.
Pro-life groups say the process can be reversed after the first pill is taken using high doses of the hormone progesterone. State attorneys argued that federal regulators have not approved the treatment, and major medical associations have warned that the protocol is unproven and unscientific.
Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy group representing the plaintiffs, welcomed the ruling. In a statement, the organization said the groups would now be able to tell women that the first abortion pill can possibly be counteracted and James is blocked from stopping them from providing that information.
In a statement on Friday, James’s office said, “Abortions cannot be reversed, and any advertising that suggests otherwise is false and misleading.”
“Attorney General James is committed to defending New Yorkers’ right to make informed decisions about their health free from deceptive practices that could put them at risk,” the statement continued. “This decision is disappointing and we are considering our legal options.”
