As is always the case as the Supreme Court approaches the end of its turn, important cases remain to be resolved. For pro-lifers, that is National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra.
As anyone who has read about, let alone attended oral arguments, there is no foolproof way of gauging from the justices’ questions what they are thinking. For example, “hostile” questions may be a fishing expedition to find the best answer to give to colleagues who really are hostile to someone’s argument.
That being said, the justices, from the least receptive to anything resembling a pro-life initiative, to the more sympathetic, found California’s so-called “Reproductive FACT Act” a stretch. The law requires both pregnancy help centers that offer medical services and those who don’t to “act as a ventriloquist’s dummy for a government message”—abortion—as one pro-life attorney phrased it.
If they offer medical services, they must post signage that the state offers free abortions. If they don’t, they must post signage that announces, “This facility is not licensed as a medical facility by the state of California.”
The justification for the Reproductive FACT Act, passed on strictly party-line votes in the Democrat-controlled California statehouse and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, is that pregnancy centers were allegedly misleading women. As became painfully clear at oral arguments, there is precious little evidence to support the allegation.
Nearly all the justices found ample reason to consider the question whether the requirements constituted an “undue burden.”
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