Pregnancy clinics are a crucial force in the pro-life movement, and the center of the argument before the justices today.
Americans on both sides often view abortion as the defining issue for the Supreme Court. But the case coming before its panel of justices today represent a legal fight that extends beyond the typical pro-life and pro-choice debate.
National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Becerra is as much a free speech case as an abortion case; at stake is whether the government can require pregnancy resource centers to share information about the availability of abortion elsewhere—advertising to clients an option that the centers, by definition, oppose.
The suit involves a network of more than 100 pregnancy centers in California, where the state’s 2015 Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency (FACT) Act mandates that such centers post contact information for obtaining state-funded free or low-cost contraception and abortions in their county.
Along with the wave of pro-life legislation at the state level in recent years, these faith-based clinics—often called crisis pregnancy centers or CPCs—represent a major force in the movement to end abortion; with more than 3,000 in the US, they outnumber abortion clinics three to four times over.
Their growing prevalence in local communities and online search results has also hurt their reputation among the pro-choice crowd, who often characterize pregnancy centers as “deceptive” for marketing to women in unsupported pregnancies while not offering resources related to abortion.
This negative perception is partly behind the California law; a legislative committee deemed it unfortunate that such centers “aim to discourage and prevent women from seeking abortion.”
“What California considers ‘unfortunate’ ...
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