“First it was a kind of shock: we didn’t realize how hated we were, and when we went in there, how despised we were,” Marie Leatherby told CNA, EWTN’s English-language news agency, by phone, which has directed a pro-life pregnancy center in the capital of California (United States) for the last 13 years.
Leatherby, executive director of the Sacramento Life Centerfound itself in the middle of a legislative and legal battle over the free speech rights of pro-life pregnancy centers, during Vice President Kamala Harris’ tenure as California attorney general.
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From 2015 to mid-2018, Leatherby and others who ran pregnancy centers fought a state law that required such facilities to post signs that included information about where women could get an abortion.
“It went against everything we are, our reason for being,” Leatherby said. “It went against our conscience.”
The Reproductive FACT Act, of which Harris was a “proud” co-sponsor and chief enforcer, required state-licensed pro-life pregnancy centers to display notices about California public programs, including “abortion for eligible women.” .
It also required them to provide a phone number for the local county social services office so women could determine if they were eligible for government programs, such as subsidized abortion.
Pro-life pregnancy centers provide hundreds of millions of dollars in free services and resources to pregnant women and mothers of young children.
They often operate near abortion clinics to offer women alternatives to abortion and help them continue their pregnancy. This includes free pregnancy services such as ultrasounds and counseling, as well as diapers and baby formula.
He Sacramento Life Center and more than 70 other pregnancy help centers, which exclusively offered care to life-affirming women, were affected by the law requiring abortion advertising.
Although pro-life pregnancy centers rallied to confront the rule, lawmakers passed the bill in 2015 with strong support among Democrats who were backed by pro-abortion organizations, which often mocked the services provided by pregnancy centers.
When the law went into effect on January 1, 2016, pregnancy centers were forced to post notices or face fines: $500 for the first violation and $1,000 for all subsequent violations.
Leatherby said that the Sacramento Life Center She refused to provide the notices at first, but after other clinics began receiving fines in Los Angeles, she said her pregnancy center complied with the law.
“It was enforced and people came to our clinic to make sure we put up (the notices) or we were considered in the newspapers as breaking the law,” Leatherby said.
The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA)—which represents numerous pro-life pregnancy centers in California and nationally—sued Harris’ office, alleging that the law violated the First Amendment by force to speak. NIFLA was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
The U.S. Supreme Court finally ordered California to stop its enforcement of the law in June 2018, about a year and a half after Harris left office to serve as senator.
The law was initially defended in court by Harris’ office and later by his successor, Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
“The law was designed to target pregnancy centers and coerce them into advertising abortion,” ADF senior counsel Kevin Theriot, one of the lawyers who represented pregnancy centers before the Supreme Court, told CNA.
“She was clearly politically motivated to harm pregnancy centers because they do not comply with her radical abortion agenda,” Theriot added.
Five of the Supreme Court justices agreed, issuing a 5-4 ruling ordering California to stop enforcing the law based on violations of the First Amendment, finding that the law required pregnancy centers to provide a “government-made script” that required them “to deliver a specific message” about abortion.
“By requiring (pro-life pregnancy centers) to inform women how they can obtain state-subsidized abortions – while at the same time (attempting) to dissuade them from choosing that option – the authorized notification clearly alters the content of (their ) speech,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the Court’s majority opinion.
Theriot said the attempt to force pregnancy centers to advertise abortion was “using the law and the government against someone you don’t like because of their religious beliefs and pro-life views.”
And he added that specifically attacking the speech of pro-life pregnancy centers “was something unique when it was enacted in California” and was promoted and enforced by Harris.
“That was the beginning of a lot of discrimination against pro-life pregnancy centers,” Theriot said.
Following in Harris’ footsteps, other states have attempted to restrict the free speech rights of pro-life pregnancy centers in other ways.
For example, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against pregnancy centers accusing them of using “false and misleading” speech, and an Illinois law attempted to restrict speech that pregnancy centers pro-life use in their advertisements. Both attempts were stopped by the judges.
“Since then, other states have regularly attempted to attack pregnancy centers and censor their speech,” Theriot said.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA.
Tyler Arnold
Tyler Arnold is a reporter for the National Catholic Register. He previously worked at The Center Square and has published in various outlets, including The Associated Press, National Review, The American Conservative and The Federalist.