“Crisis Pregnancy Centers” are fake abortion clinics run by religious fanatics who use online fraud to get them to the top of the search results in order to lure women seeking abortions to visiting a place they believe to be an abortion clinic, but which is really a religious mission where the people pretending to be medical professionals dispense misinformation about the medical risks of abortion, then apply high-pressure sales tactics to bully and trick women into carrying unwanted pregnancies to term.
In 2015, California introduced the Reproductive FACT Act, which limited the use of “intentionally deceptive advertising and counseling practices [that] often confuse, misinform, and even intimidate women from making fully-informed, time-sensitive decisions about critical health care.”
Under the Reproductive FACT Act, Crisis Pregnancy Centers are no longer allowed to deceive women into thinking that they are speaking to licensed medical personnel, and they must inform women who enter their premises that “the state provides free or affordable access to contraception, prenatal care, and abortion.”
The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, an industry group for these centers, is taking a First Amendment lawsuit against the law and the state of California to the Supreme Court, arguing that their free speech rights protect their ability to deceive women about the science of pregnancy and whether their counselors have medical qualifications.
NIFLA’s suit is being bankrolled by Arizona’s Alliance Defending Freedom, the religious group that sued for the right of cake-makers to discriminate against gay people.
Horrifyingly, there’s a good chance that NIFLA could win, because they’ve framed their First Amendment claims in terms that are especially friendly to earlier decisions from Chief Justice Kennedy, and they can count on Justice Neil Gorsuch (who stole Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court seat with help from Donald Trump) to rubberstamp any anti-abortion move, no matter how despicable.
