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In a strategy that has already worked in New York, Alliance Defending Freedom is taking proactive steps on behalf of its pro-life clients to get a court to step in and quickly protect their right to free speech and a women’s prerogative to change her mind.
A network of pregnancy resource clinics and an individual pregnancy center are proactively suing California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who has taken steps to intimidate and censor other pro-life pregnancy centers.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a legal complaint last week on behalf of its clients, SCV Pregnancy Center, located in Santa Clarita, California, and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), a membership organization of more than 1,700 pro-life pregnancy centers and medical clinics, including 150 in California.
The suit claims that Bonta is unconstitutionally silencing pro-life pregnancy centers due to their religious viewpoint. Bonta filed suit in September 2023 against several pro-life pregnancy centers, as well as Heartbeat International (HBI), a national group that provides resources and referrals about abortion pill reversal.
Bonta alleges that the pro-life groups are engaging in deceptive business practices and misleading women about the effectiveness and safety of abortion pill reversal.
Abortion pill reversal is the administering of supplemental progesterone after a woman has taken the first pill required for a chemical abortion but regrets her decision. Advocates cite studies showing the treatment to be largely safe and state that it is effective in 64 to 68 percent of cases.
Success generally hinges on how quickly a woman begins the reversal treatment after ingesting Mifepristone, a pill that blocks progesterone and over the course of several days will slowly kill the child.
When administered in time, within the first 48 hours, the pill is extremely effective. In fact, over 5,000 babies have been born and are healthy following the use of abortion pill reversal.
The complaint notes that Alternatives Pregnancy Center (a member of NIFLA), located in Sacramento, California, has used progesterone to counteract the effects of the first pill in the chemical abortion process four times. At least two of those have resulted in the birth of a healthy baby.
ADF recounts the example of Atoria Foley, who when lacking support from the baby’s father, decided to obtain a chemical abortion. After taking the first pill she regretted her choice and remembering seeing a sign for abortion pill reversal, searched on the Internet and found an abortion pill reversal hotline that then connected her to Alternatives.
Alternatives prescribed progesterone which saved the baby’s life. Foley’s child is now a healthy toddler.
After mentioning another example from Alternatives and the thousands of babies saved, the suit claims that “if Defendant Rob Bonta, the Attorney General of California, had his way, these children would not be alive today. That’s because he is seeking an injunction to prevent pregnancy centers from telling the public about this life-saving option.”
Bonta is seeking an injunction that would stop pro-life groups from being able to speak about the effectiveness of abortion pill reversal. Because of fear of prosecution, the plaintiffs in this suit have self-censored.
The plaintiffs note Bonta’s animus towards pro-life centers and his efforts to silence and shut them down.
For example, Bonta has said he found it “horrifying” that “right now there are more crisis pregnancy centers in California than abortion care clinics.”
He has often maligned pro-life pregnancy centers, even issuing a consumer alert claiming that pregnancy resource centers do not provide “comprehensive reproductive care” because they do not provide abortions. He also made unsupported claims that pro-life clinics may not be licensed, may seek to delay appointments, and may provide inaccurate information.
The suit also noted that Bonta has made false statements about abortion pill reversal. Bonta’s office said that the treatment was “unproven and largely experimental” and that “it has no credible scientific backing, and has potential risks.”
The suit claims that California’s attorney general is using the power of his office to silence a viewpoint he opposes and promote his own. For example, Bonta once stated,
“Those who are struggling with the complex decision to get an abortion deserve support and trustworthy guidance — not lies and misinformation. And let me be clear: the evidence shows that the vast majority of people do not regret their decision to have an abortion — more than 95% of patients who undergo an abortion later say they made the right decision. HBI and RealOptions took advantage of pregnant patients at a deeply vulnerable time in their lives, using false and misleading claims to lure them in and mislead them about a potentially risky procedure. We are launching today’s lawsuit to put a stop to their predatory and unlawful behavior.”
Bonta then directed Californians to pro-abortion content, saying, “I urge any Californian seeking information related to reproductive care to visit our Reproductive Rights website, which lists programs and resources that can provide the accurate, timely, and reliable help they need.”
The NIFLA suit claims that it is Bonta who is pushing a dangerous medical procedure.
In the very same communication in which Bonta claimed abortion pill reversal was unproven and unsafe, his office wrote, “While medication abortion has been proven by decades of research to be exceedingly safe and reliable, no credible research so far has supported the safety or efficacy of APR.”
In reality, abortion pill reversal has been proven to be safe and effective while medication abortion has been proven to pose great risk of bleeding, infection, and the need for hospitalization.
ADF Senior Counsel Caleb Dalton stated in a press release,
“Access to information is a hallmark of a free society and is essential to making informed medical choices. But California’s attorney general is silencing pregnancy centers and censoring information about life-saving medical options.”
He added, “Attorney General Bonta and his allies at Planned Parenthood may not like it, but the truth is that many women regret their abortions, and some seek to stop the effects of chemical abortion drugs before taking the second drug in the abortion drug process. Women deserve to know all their options every step of the way.”
Bonta is seeking to silence pro-life groups because he is opposed to them. If this was about safety, transparency, and efficacy, Bonta would be targeting chemical abortion pills, which are dangerous to both mothers and their unborn babies, instead of the use of progesterone to try to save a baby’s life.
If this were about unfair business practices, he would go after abortion clinics that prey on women, who are alone and often coerced into an abortion, and sell them abortion pills and then lie to them about the safety of those pills, rather than the pro-life centers that seek to save a mother’s baby at no cost to her.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has already been blocked in two different suits from enforcing a similar law against pro-life groups. And therein lies the path forward for pro-life centers who find themselves the target of unfair laws seeking to censor them.
When a state passes a law targeting pro-life centers, such as Illinois did, or when an attorney general says they will go after pro-life groups, the best response is to file a lawsuit. Illinois’s law was declared “painfully unconstitutional,” and James’s efforts were twice rebuffed because pro-life centers went on the offense.
It is unconstitutional for a politician to use the power of their office to silence speech or to seek to shut down a group because they oppose it ideologically. The only way to stop them is to call them out on it through legal means.
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