Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 28, 2024 / 15:07 pm (CNA).
“First it was kind of a shock — we didn’t realize how hated we were, and going in there, how despised we were,” Marie Leatherby, who has led a pro-life pregnancy center in California’s capital for the past 13 years, told CNA over the phone.
Leatherby, the executive director of the Sacramento Life Center, found herself 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 attorney general of California.
From 2015 through mid-2018, Leatherby and others who ran pregnancy resource centers fought against a state law that forced those pregnancy centers to display notices that include information about where women could obtain an abortion.
“[This] went against everything we’re about — the reason we exist,” Leatherby said. “It went against our conscience.”
The Reproductive FACT Act, of which Harris was a “proud” co-sponsor and the primary enforcer, compelled pro-life pregnancy centers licensed by the state to display notices about public programs in California, including “abortion for eligible women.” It required that they provide a phone number for the local county social services office so women could determine whether they were eligible for the government programs, such as subsidized abortion.
Pro-life pregnancy centers provide hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of free services and resources to women who are pregnant and to mothers of young children. They often set up their operations near abortion clinics to provide women with alternatives to abortion so they can have help in continuing their pregnancies. This includes free pregnancy services, such as ultrasounds and counseling, as well as material goods such as diapers and baby formula.
Sacramento Life Center and more than 70 other pregnancy resource centers that exclusively offered life-affirming pregnancy care were affected by the law mandating advertisements for abortion. Although the pro-life pregnancy centers joined together to lobby against the legislation, lawmakers passed the bill in 2015 with strong support among Democrats who were backed by pro-abortion organizations that often derided the services provided by the pregnancy centers.
When the law went into effect on Jan. 1, 2016, pregnancy centers were forced to either display notices or face repeated fines: $500 for the first offense and $1,000 for all subsequent offenses. Leatherby said Sacramento Life Center 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 into our clinic to make sure we were posting [the notices] or we got written up in the papers as lawbreakers,” 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 on allegations that the law violated the First Amendment by compelling speech. NIFLA was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The United States Supreme Court ultimately ordered California to halt its enforcement of the law in June 2018, about a year and a half after Harris left office to serve as a senator.
The law was initially defended in court by Harris’ office and then subsequently by her successor, Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
“The law was designed to target pregnancy centers and coerce them to advertise for abortion,” ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot, one of the lawyers who represented the pregnancy centers at the Supreme Court, told CNA.
“It was clearly politically motivated to harm pregnancy centers because they don’t toe the line on their radical abortion agenda,” Theriot added.
Five of the Supreme Court justices agreed, handing down a 5-4 decision that ordered California to stop enforcing the law based on First Amendment violations, finding that the law forced the pregnancy centers to provide a “government-drafted script” that compels them “to speak a particular message” on abortion.
“By requiring [pro-life pregnancy centers] to inform women how they can obtain state-subsidized abortions — at the same time [that they] try to dissuade women from choosing that option — the licensed notice plainly alters the content of [their] speech,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the court’s majority opinion.
Theriot said the effort to force pregnancy centers to advertise abortion was “weaponizing the law and the government against someone you don’t like because of their religious convictions and their pro-life views.” Specifically targeting the speech of pro-life pregnancy centers, he added, “was pretty unique when it was enacted in California” and promoted and enforced by Harris.
“That was the beginning of quite a bit of discrimination against pro-life pregnancy centers,” Theriot said.
Following in Harris’ footsteps, other states have tried to curtail the free speech rights of pro-life pregnancy resource centers in other ways. This includes New York Attorney General Letitia James filing a lawsuit against pregnancy centers that accuses them of “false and misleading” speech and an Illinois law that attempted to restrict the speech pro-life pregnancy centers use in advertisements. Both efforts were halted by judges.
“Other states have [since] been trying to target pregnancy centers and censor their speech on a regular basis,” Theriot said.
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This is an opportunity for woke Catholics to weigh in to defend Harris’ full and complete support to murder babies up to the moment (and even after) God intended for them to be born, cared for and loved as His creation. Let the Trump-haters now weigh in.
Trump and Vance ( who claims to be Catholic)have back pedaled on abortion, so where does that leave a Catholic? You can take your half a loaf and chew on it, but it will soon be gone.
When has Trump backpedaled on his position to eliminate federal funding of abortion, as he did in his first term, or not appoint pro-abortion federal judges?
Not necessarily. Trump’s first term in office argues against that.
On the contrary. All foreign aid spending, for which the administration had control, which contained abortion funding, had that funding eliminated or the entire aid package was cancelled.
And while we’re on the topic of “life issues”, we now have a sitting president who has a longstanding dementia and who, as we breathe, has control over nuclear weapons that could annihilate millions. I thank those Catholics who helped put him in office for this serious state of affairs. And, to pose another scenario, we now have Catholics willing to vote for Kammila Harris who also will have the authority to decide whether or not to use a nuclear weapon. Way to go, Catholics!
I believe abortion is an evil act when the baby is aborted because it is not convenient for the woman to have a child. But everything is not always black and white. What about the pregnant woman whose baby dies in her womb at 8 months—-does she have to carry a dead baby until natural birth?
Gerald please inform yourself. How can it be an abortion if the unborn child is dead?
No Mr. Gerald it doesn’t work that way.
Shamala Harris = Brutal-Soviet-Tyrant.
Her tribal warfare = doing this (the below) to every citizen that refuses submission to her death cult:
Part I of Harris Death Cult Warfare:
In the 1990s, my wife was co-coordinator of The Gabriel Project in Prince George’s County in MD. She helped to establish the first Gabriel Project House for Mothers in Crisis Pregnancies. The house was donated by a Catholic couple who had a small real estate business, and who, instead of enriching themselves, used their know-how to help the downtrodden of the world.
My wife found a woman who was an illegal immigrant from Africa, smuggled into the USA, who was literally a slave-laborer living secretly in the basement of the house of her slave-owner, himself an African man from her own African country. This poor woman, whom I will call Gabriella (as she is alive and now happily married with her baby) was pregnant. Her slave owner told her to get an abortion, do that Gabriella would still serve him (and him alone).
My wife was contacted by Gabriella (who had seen or heard ads by The Gabriel Project) asking for help to get her out of the slave master’s house to save her baby’s life.
My wife put the plan in motion to help Gabriella escape and come live in the Gabriel House, as the 1st resident mother-in-crisis.
When the moment was right, Gabriella made her escape, with nothing but the clothes on her back, and my wife brought her to the Gabriel House, where Gabriella began her life as a free woman, protecting her baby and herself from her slave owner.
The slave owner found out my wife’s name and our phone number and called our house and threatened my wife, demanding to know the address of the Gabriel House, so that he could take Gabriella back. He failed in his attempt to find and take Gabriella.
Part 2 in my next post…
Thank you for sharing that story Mr. Chris.
I’ve read about Haitian restavik children brought to the US with the family they’d been sold into servitude to. The Haitian families had no idea that sort of virtual slavery was illegal in the States.
Truly terrifying that modern slavery still exists. And given that Biden-Harris surrendered the US border to the Mexican cartels, one wonders how many men, women and children have been trafficked into slavery (including sexual slavery) with the approval of the Open Borders Wing of the Democratic Party.
Does the law also require the abortion clinics to display a sign indicating the services available at pro-life clinics? If not, why not. This should be a case for legal equality. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander!
It was considered compelled speech I think & thrown out by the court.
Calls for a poster war – that can be used well in giving much needed info to many who are kept in darkness by those who seem to have intentionally chosen to be blind to lead others unto same !
The Flame of Love prayer card / poster to blind Satan as well as Divine Mercy image to bring all – to The Lord – hope all prolife centers would have same …mercy of The Lord as The Blood and Water to strike and remove the enemy claims and lies from parents and families ,from those who advocate slavery to demonic powers , making oneself as own enemy , even as a terrorist, war monger and liar …
Posters can narrate its effects in vast realms that are well known – as autoimmune disorders that affect immune systems resulting in cancers , infections , arthritis , heart attacks , mood disorders , violence addictions, obesity … very many of the social and health issues of our times having a root in same ..broken relationships , hardness of hearts , loss of faith and trust in God or each other , carnality ..with its self hatreds and identity confusions which are used to bring more despair that
such cannot be prevented or healed ..
nature itself affected ..
Hoping that the candidate and her ‘helpers ‘ would be helped through intercession of St.John The Baptist on this Feast day of his martyrdom and St.Mary Magdalene – said to have been the one who taught the dance to Salome …entrusting oneself and the little ones to The Mother to be the ‘little children ‘ in the Kingdom of the Divine Will to crush the head of the dragon who spews forth torrents of lies ..
FIAT !
This must be a Follow The Money reason. Why would anyone want to stop people helping pregnant women to have their babies instead of get an abortion? There is a profit in providing an abortion. There is no profit in providing free help to women who want to have their babies. Who donates to politicians? A large company that primarily provides abortions.
Yes, of course. There’s always a money trail.
Elections matter.
Shamala-Harris-Soviet-Gulag, Part II:
In Part I my wife helped Gabriella save her baby’s life, and helped Gabriella escape from a life as a slave in the basement of an illegal immigrant slave owner. It was all made possible by the Gabriel Project.
Now it is known by all people, pro and con, that Shamala and her warfare tribe of “Obama-Soviet-Tyrants” live to destroy The Gabriel Project, and every similar “Pro-Mother-and-Child” project, and all people helping them, in the USA and on earth, in the name of their one true god, Moloch, the only god the Obama-Harris-Death-Cultist (or as Barry Sotero, aka Obama, once prayed out loud, “god bless Planned Parenthood.)
So here in Part II, I tell the story of what Harris-Obama-Death-and-War-Cult intends to do to all who defend Mother-and-Father-and-Child:
Gabriella had her baby, found a new home for herself snd her baby, got married, and lives “happily-ever-after.”
The Gabriel Project house in Prince George’s County flourished and became filled yo capacity, even over-flowing with mothers seeking refuge.
This enraged the ice-cold hatred of the local PG County “Harris-Obama-Death-Warfare-Cultists” and their client, Planned Parenthood.
My wife’s friend, co-coordinator of the Gabriel Project, whom I will call Mary, was “invited” by the local ABC TV News affiliate station to a “public forum” where she could represent the Gabriel Project and the “Pro-Mother-and-Child” political viewpoint, in what was characterized to be a debate with a person representing “the Planned Parenthood” point-of-view. Now Mary is black woman from a Baptist Church who grew up in PG County, and she the host of the TV station who told her she would be given a fair hearing to champion the Gabriel Project on the local PG County TV station. That was…of bourse…a blatant lie.
The TV station invited a militant pro-abortion activist to tske the stage against Mary, and packed the small TV live audience full of pro-abortion activists, and the TV host used the local TV event to blind-side Mary and smear her on TV for “betraying black women” by deceiving them into “having unwanted children,” and then “kicking them out of the Gabriel House” and “leaving single mothers homeless and impoverished with a child they could not support.”
Mary was…not surprisingly…shocked and in tears in what was done to her on live TV by the local TV hostess…a true “Shamala-Harris-Inquisitor-Clone.”
Then curiously, just weeks later, the “Harris-Obama-Death-Cult” militia discovered where the Gabriel House in PG County was located.
They broke in during the day when the mothers were all out of the house at the doctor or at work, etc, they smashed the windows, destroyed all of the appliances and computer work stations, and urinated on the carpets all over the house.
So that’s the war that is waged by the Shamala-Harris-Obama-Warfare cult. The very same Harris that went to Ukraine and told them US will only support them if they agree to long war with Putin, and then stabbed Ukraine in the back by denying Ukraine F-16 fighter planes to defend itself, to make sure that Obama-Biden-Harris-Long-Death-War in Ukraine goes on and on for death.
Because that’s what Tyranno-Smugness-Diversity-War-Mongers-Obama-Biden-Harris offer, and how they get the cash to live as Millionaires while “playing public servants on TV,” offering to destroy houses for pregnant mothers rejecting abortion, and “privatizing the gains” of “public service” by shaking down million-dollar-side-deals in Ukraine, and “socializing the cost of their side deals” by confecting long wars of death and destruction for the poor people of Ukraine who aren’t in on their lucrative side deals in Ukraine.
Utterly evil…and as cold as Satan.
Everything that the left does is a one-way street, their way or the highway. If you are one of their favored groups you can apparently do no wrong. They prove their self-righteousness by refusing to accept responsibility or accountability for the consequences of their actions. Their response is name-calling, no better than a schoolyard taunt.
*
The Democratic party is pretty much a party of Jacobins. Their obsession with abortion is very much like the French Rein of Terror.
Chris in Maryland: and given the truth about Harris’ love of abortion, some Catholics will in lock step, march themselves to the polling site and pull the lever for her. They should know that should she win, every abortion thereafter is on them. Instead of them evangelizing the culture, they throw their lot in with Moloch.
Let’s hear from all of CWR’s contributing esteemed professors, who are always at the ready to trash Trump and Vance. Let’s see how they handle this. I suspect they don’t want to go on the record; it might destroy employment opportunities in our “institutions of higher learning” and subject them to cancelling by their colleagues. And, of course, our bishops will be mum on this, as well.
“Let’s hear from all of CWR’s contributing esteemed professors, who are always at the ready to trash Trump and Vance.”
This is risible or worse. Don’t embarrass yourself.
Coerced speech and compelled belief. Prayerfully, Catholic Vote and others will provide a more detailed history of Kamala Harris’s role as SF District Attorney and the state’s Attorney General. Guaranteed that except for a smattering of token cases against criminal immigrants, her entire tenure was based on abusing the law to fundamentally force Christians and other orthodox religions to “practice” the state’s pagan sickularism under the overarching influence of atheists global elitists like Soros.
Risable if it were not true.
On the bishops, USCCB’s president at the time, Gomez, was told by the Vatican to withdraw criticism of Biden prior to the inauguration – at the instigation of eminent senior American hierarchs. The bishops have been mum since. According to Archbishop Gregory and others, Biden can be described as a “cafeteria Catholic.” That’s as critical as senior prelates are willing to go.
Regarding academics, show me one opinion piece critical of Biden/Harris with no dismissive and derisive comments about Trump/Vance. Look at Bonagura most recently. It happens repeatedly. I will happily take the walk of shame; just produce the evidence. In the meantime I will wait for the Catholic academic take on Harris’ history of targeting pro-lifers, commentary from the halls of academia on Walz’s transgender nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of non-academic types who will come forward in your publication. I am not asking for whitewashing Trump, but I am waiting for unvarnished criticism of the other side. It doesn’t happen, and we know why. Let’s not kid ourselves. Again, I would be gleefully embarrassed to discover that I have mischaracterized Catholic intellectuals. It would please me to know that they are welcome and encouraged to express non-progressive opinions without negative consequences in Catholic institutions of higher learning. Sadly, we know the truth. As do you, Mr. Olson.
Kamala Harris is willing to gain power at the life of innocent babies who can not fight .
She is very clever . She doesn’t call it murder or even abortion .
She calls it reproductive rights .
I wonder how many abortions she has had???