Supreme Court Ruling Could Mean Life or Death for Her Pro-Life Pregnancy Center
The operator of a pregnancy resource center in
California says she may have to close its doors unless the Supreme
Court, after hearing arguments Tuesday, rules that a state law
forcing the pro-life organization to promote abortion is
unconstitutional.
“Each of us as individuals has to make a
decision about whether we’re comfortable working in a center [where
the law] is forcing us, well, compelling us, to speak a message that
is contrary to our personal … deeply held beliefs,” Christine
Vatuone, CEO and president of Informed Choices, told The Daily Signal
in an interview.
Referring to the 2015 state law that she and
other opponents say violates their First Amendment right to free
speech, Vatuone added:
Not only does it affect the women who walk through our doors, not only does it affect us financially, but each one of us—whether it be a donor or a volunteer or staff—it affects us on a personal level too. So the ramifications are pretty far-reaching.
Vatuone’s facility, Informed Choices, is a
pregnancy resource center and medical clinic in Gilroy, California,
although some pro-life pregnancy centers do not offer medical
services.
The law passed by the California state
Legislature 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,” according
to Alliance
Defending Freedom, the faith-based legal aid group that represents
the pro-life centers in the Supreme Court case.
The posted “disclosure” required by the law
must include a phone number where pregnant women may reach Planned
Parenthood or other abortion providers.
Michael Farris, a lawyer who is CEO of Alliance
Defending Freedom, will argue the case, National
Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Becerra,
before the Supreme Court. His organization represents the National
Institute of Family and Life Advocates,
an organization that provides legal counsel to pro-life pregnancy
centers such as Informed Choices across the country.
The California law also requires unlicensed
pregnancy centers, which offer adoption referrals and nonmedical
resources other than abortions to expectant mothers, to include
“large disclosures about their nonmedical status” in any
advertising.
This makes advertising prohibitively expensive
for pregnancy centers that operate based on donations, Denise Harle,
legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal
in an email.
“It truly would make advertising impossible
and completely cost prohibitive,” Harle said.
Billboards or ads in newspapers, other
publications, or online “would be astronomically expensive,” she
said, since the law requires “all these disclaimers in multiple
languages and in larger font.”
Courts have weakened or rejected local laws in
states such as Maryland, New Jersey, and Texas, Harle said Friday at
an event at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., and “there are none
left standing that are even remotely similar to what California has
done here.”
Vatuone, who has led Informed Choices since
2014, said the outcome of the case is especially important to her
because she also is battling stage 4 breast cancer:
I choose very carefully what I give my energies toward, because the treatments I am on are difficult and I experience a lot of fatigue and difficult side effects. And so the fact that I am giving my time and energy to my center, but also to this case to speak about what we do so the community can better understand—I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t really, really important to me.
Vatuone, who is married to a patent attorney,
has three children: a daughter, 23, and two sons, 21 and 18.
The law is an assault on free speech, Harle, the
Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer, said.
“California’s goal is to prevent these
[pregnancy] centers from their outreach to women, from even forming
that relationship so they can give their message of hope and truth to
women,” she said. “And [state officials] want to do that by
blocking their ability to even tell women where they are located,
their address.”
Pregnancy centers in California “can’t even
put their address in the advertisement without this very misleading
disclaimer that suggests they should be licensed,” Harle said, “and
the truth is California doesn’t require a license for any of the
activities that the nonmedical centers are doing.”
Vatuone said her clinic in Northern California’s
Santa Clara County displays promises on its walls that “we will
treat you with respect, we will protect your privacy, we will not
pressure you, we will support you, and we will not lie to you.” It
would be robbed of its purpose if the Supreme Court upholds the
California law, she said.
“If what they were seeing on that wall instead
was an advertisement essentially for the abortion industry, it would
come up pretty clear to them what we stand for, and it would be
false,” Vatuone said.
“That isn’t what we stand for. We exist to
help women with the possibilities of life, and that means for herself
and for her children. We are very concerned about the hearts of
both.”
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https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/03/19/4supreme-court-ruling-could-mean-life-or-death-for-her-pro-life-pregnancy-center/?My comments: America has No Future, before the Living God, as long as there is Government Sanctioned Abortion Murder.
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