The
Women’s Pregnancy Care Clinic in Pasadena, Calif. offers basic services
like pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. Women must go elsewhere if they
choose to terminate a pregnancy; the center does not provide referrals. (photo: Susanna Tam/KPCC)
Does it violate free speech?
The Supreme Court is weighing whether to
hear an anti-abortion group’s challenge on free speech grounds to a
California law that requires “crisis pregnancy centers” — which advocate
alternatives to the procedure — to also advise clients that the state
offers free or low-cost contraception and assistance in ending their
pregnancy.
The justices could announce as early as
Monday whether they will hear the case, the latest in a series of
clashes pitting the 1st Amendment against the state’s power to regulate
the medical profession.
The California Legislature said two years
ago that it was concerned that the more than 200 pregnancy centers in
California sometimes provided “intentionally deceptive advertising and
counseling practices that often confuse, misinform and even intimidate
women from making fully informed decisions” about their medical care.
The so-called Reproductive FACT Act requires these centers to disclose
whether they have medical professionals on the staff and to inform
patients that the state offers subsidized contraception and abortion.
Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals upheld the law against claims that the disclosures were a kind
of “compelled speech” that violated the 1st Amendment.
But three separate appeals are pending
before the Supreme Court, including one from the National Institute of
Family and Life Advocates, which says it has “over 110 nonprofit,
pro-life pregnancy centers” in California.
The justices have considered the appeals
for more than three weeks in their weekly conferences, suggesting at
least several of them are inclined to hear the cases.
If the court agrees to hear the challenge
to California’s clinic-disclosure law, it would be the second major
case before the high court this term that arises as a conservative 1st
Amendment challenge to a liberal state law — and it comes from the same
lawyers.
The Arizona-based Alliance Defending
Freedom, which appealed on behalf of NIFLA, also represents the Colorado
baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The
baker seeks a free-speech exemption to the state’s civil rights laws.
The high court will hear his case in December.
Full story at The LA Times.From http://cal-catholic.com/does-it-violate-free-speech/
