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News > World

US Supreme Court Questions Women Access to Abortion Information

  • Police officers stand in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC, U.S., January 19, 2018.

    Police officers stand in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC, U.S., January 19, 2018. | Photo: Reuters

Published 20 March 2018
Opinion

The Court will issue the final ruling in June.

A California law that requires Christian-based facilities that steer pregnant women away from abortion to post notices about the availability of state-subsidized abortions ran into trouble at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, alleging it could go against the right to free speech.

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Various justices voiced concern that the Democratic-backed 2015 law was crafted to take aim at a specific viewpoint — opposition to abortion — held by these non-profit facilities officially branded as "crisis pregnancy centers."

Conservative justices sharply questioned the lawyer representing California, and even two supposedly "liberal" justices expressed unease with parts of the law during an hour-long argument as part of an appeal by these facilities of a lower court ruling upholding the statute. The court has a 5-4 conservative majority.

The "crisis pregnancy centers" accuse California of compelling them to advertise for abortion even though it violates their beliefs, running afoul of the guarantee of freedom of speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan asked Joshua Klein, California’s deputy solicitor general whether the law was applied only to “speakers whose speech we don’t much like.” Klein said the law was applied to be useful to poor pregnant women so she knows that "her financial circumstance does not make her unable to access to alternative and supplemental care, including full prenatal and delivery care.”."

California’s Reproductive FACT Act, passed by a Democratic-led legislature and signed by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, requires centers licensed as family planning facilities to post or distribute notices that the state has programs offering free or low-cost birth control and abortion services. It also requires unlicensed facilities that may have no medical provider on staff to disclose that fact.

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