WASHINGTON--The Pregnancy Care Clinic in the Southern California city of El Cajon offers a host of services for pregnant women including ultrasound exams, prenatal vitamins and maternity clothes. There is one major exception: abortion.
Now the clinic, which staunchly opposes abortion, is among of a group of Christian-based facilities, known as crisis pregnancy centers, involved in a major case that goes before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. They are challenging a California law that forces centers that are licensed as family planning facilities to post notices that the state has programmes offering free or low-cost birth control and abortion services, a requirement they argue violates their free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
The law requires unlicensed facilities with no medical provider on staff to disclose that fact. "They're forcing us to use our walls as a billboard to promote abortion," Pregnancy Care Clinic Executive Director Josh McClure said in an interview.
McClure, whose facility is licensed, compared California's law to forcing the American Lung Association to tell people where to buy cigarettes.
California said in legal papers some of these centers try to prevent women from accessing abortions by using incomplete or false medical advice. Some try to resemble medical clinics down to lab coats worn by staff, giving the impression they offer abortion services while employing no actual medical professionals, California said.
The centers say they offer legitimate services and that their mission is to persuade women to forego abortion.
The case is one of several the Supreme Court is tackling during its current term in which conservative legal groups are invoking the First Amendment and asserting that governments are unconstitutionally compelling people to say or do things they oppose. Similar cases this term involve plaintiffs who argue that the First Amendment protects them from having to make a wedding cake for a gay couple or pay fees to unions representing public employees to fund collective bargaining. These cases may have a sympathetic audience on a court with a 5-4 conservative majority that already has been receptive to First Amendment arguments.
The Supreme Court is deciding six free speech cases this term. Three, like this one, involve claims of unlawful "compelled speech." If the court strengthens protections against compelled speech, that could benefit conservative causes including limiting the reach of its 2015 decision legalizing gay marriage or freeing corporations from certain regulations.
"A victory in each of these cases would signal that there are ... situations where a free speech claim might prevail against the government that might not have 20 years ago," said attorney Ken Klukowski of the First Liberty Institute conservative legal group.
