The same day (July 27) that Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law a bill (S.B. 1909) designed to silence every pro-life pregnancy center in the state, the Thomas More Society filed a lawsuit against its enforcement.
A week later, the court issued an injunction prohibiting Pritzker and his attorney general, Kwame Raoul, from enforcing it. That means — for the moment at least — those providing pro-life advice and counsel to pregnant women may continue to do so, at least until the court issues its final ruling.
At issue is the law granting, with strong Democratic support, power to the state’s attorney general to shut down any pro-life clinic that doesn’t fall in line with the state’s view on abortion: it is a “right” and voices speaking against it must be silenced.
From the law:
Consumers [must be] protected from deceptive and unfair practices.
Despite these laws, vulnerable State residents and nonresidents seeking health care in this State have repeatedly been misled by organizations and their agents purporting to provide comprehensive reproductive health care services, but which, in reality, aim to dissuade pregnant persons from considering abortion care through deceptive, fraudulent, and misleading information and practices, without any regard for a pregnant person’s concerns or circumstances.
The fact that Illinois already has such a law in place applying to every business in the state didn’t matter. Zealous anti-life Democrats wanted to make sure that pro-life clinics were targeted and shut down.
Without defining terms, the bill gives Raoul unlimited power to determine just what is “inaccurate or misleading information overstating the risks associated with abortion, including conveying untrue claims that abortion causes cancer or infertility and concealing data that shows the risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than the risk of death associated with an abortion.”
The law decrying such misinformation is itself guilty. That “14 times” figure is based upon a single — and flawed — study. And it ignores the fact that the “risk of death” to the unborn child is 100 percent.
The law targets pro-life clinics while ignoring entirely the falsehoods, misstatements, and lies promoted by abortion factories:
The conduct of these organizations has become increasingly aggressive following the United States Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The State has an interest to protect against deceptive, fraudulent, and misleading advertising and practices [provided by these organizations]….
The law declares that such organizations “shall not engage in unfair methods of competition [with existing abortion factories] or unfair or deceptive acts or practices including the use or employment of any deception, fraud, false pretense, false promise, or misrepresentation.…”
As Peter Breen, executive vice president of the Thomas More Society, noted:
This is a blatant attempt to chill and silence pro-life speech under the guise of consumer protections.
Pregnancy help ministries provide real options and assistance to women and families in need, but instead of the praise they deserve, pro-abortion-rights politicians are targeting these ministries with $50,000 fines and injunctions solely because of their pro-life viewpoint.
Thomas Glessner, president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), the plaintiff in the lawsuit, said, “The state government has completely overstepped the bounds of any logical and relevant authority by inserting insane partisan politics into their governing bodies and attempting to trample the First Amendment rights of those with whom they disagree.”
The lawsuit makes abundantly clear whom the law targets:
But now, speaking common pro-life views as part of a pregnancy help ministry, or failing to speak the State’s pro-abortion views on hotly disputed issues, is illegal under state law, on pain of crippling fines, injunctions, and attorney fees.
Meanwhile, abortion facilities (as well as expressly exempted licensed healthcare providers and hospitals) remain free to engage in their own controversial speech about abortion, as they wish.
Here is the point. Without the chains of the Constitution tying down tyrants from enacting their will, tyranny would abound. The plaintiffs note that the Founding Fathers foresaw that:
It is for days like today—perhaps more than any other—that the First and Fourteenth Amendment[s] were ratified, to stop such affronts to core premises and promises of our national life….
In short, SB1909 is not only unwise and unnecessary, but also an egregious affront to the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech, assembly, and religious exercise, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of equal protection, due process of law, and the right to continue a pregnancy.
The law is not only an affront to the Constitution, it is a frontal attack on the right to life, and, by implication, the Giver of Life. He is the real target of the pro-death Democrats approving this monstrosity.
