{"id":61027,"date":"2018-03-21T05:34:41","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T05:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=61027"},"modified":"2018-03-21T05:34:41","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T05:34:41","slug":"justices-press-california-over-law-challenged-by-antiabortion-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/justices-press-california-over-law-challenged-by-antiabortion-groups.html","title":{"rendered":"Justices Press California Over Law Challenged by Antiabortion Groups"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justices Press California Over Law Challenged by Antiabortion Groups<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Supreme Court justices on Tuesday questioned the intent of a California law that the state says aims to inform pregnant women of their rights to reproductive health care, but antiabortion groups say forces them to promote abortion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 2015 law requires facilities offering pregnancy-related services\u2014including crisis pregnancy centers that seek to persuade women to carry to term\u2014to post a notice about the state\u2019s free and low-cost family planning programs, which include abortion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Justice Samuel Alito suggested the law may have been designed to blunt the antiabortion message that such centers seek to deliver. While ostensibly covering hundreds of facilities across the state, the law contains many \u201ccrazy exemptions\u201d that all point the same way, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

If \u201cit turns out that just about the only clinics that are covered by this are pro-life clinics,\u201d couldn\u2019t the court \u201cinfer intentional discrimination?\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

California\u2019s lawyer, Joshua Klein, conceded that many facilities that serve pregnant women, including those participating in Medi-Cal, the state\u2019s version of Medicaid, are exempt from the requirement. But that is because they already provide the programs listed in the notice, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Klein said the law \u201cempowers the woman by explaining that her financial circumstance does not make her unable to access alternative and supplemental care, including full prenatal and delivery care that petitioners [the antiabortion centers] do not themselves supply.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

California says that some women are misled or confused by facilities that seem like medical centers but don\u2019t provide \u201ccomprehensive\u201d reproductive health care, or perhaps any medical care at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to requiring licensed facilities to post the notice, the law, also requires unlicensed antiabortion centers to post statements disclosing they aren\u2019t medical clinics.<\/span><\/p>\n

The notice also must be printed in the languages used by Medi-Cal, which vary across the state\u2019s 58 counties\u2014as many as 13 in Los Angeles County, for instance, including Armenian, Cambodian and Farsi.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was little surprise that conservatives like Justice Alito would challenge California on the law, called the California Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency, or FACT Act. But from the court\u2019s left, Justice Elena Kagan also pressed the state.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you read this statute, Mr. Klein, there\u2019s at least a question\u201d that it may have been \u201cgerrymandered\u201d to target antiabortion facilities, she said, and that would be a \u201cserious problem.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Justice Kagan\u2019s questions followed remarks from Justice Anthony Kennedy, typically the deciding vote in abortion-related cases, that indicated deep reservations about the California statute.<\/span><\/p>\n

In response to one of Justice Kennedy\u2019s earlier questions, the challengers\u2019 lawyer, Michael Farris, said an unlicensed center operating under a billboard reading \u201cChoose Life\u201d would be required to post the 29-word notice that it is unlicensed \u201cin the same size font, and in a number of languages, whatever is required by that county.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIf that is true, Justice Kennedy said, \u201cthat means that this is an undue burden in that instance and that should suffice to invalidate the statute.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That term, \u201cundue burden,\u201d is typically used in assessing whether a measure restricting abortion violates a woman\u2019s constitutional right to the procedure, not whether a law that could undermine an antiabortion message infringes the First Amendment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Justice Kennedy himself helped establish the undue-burden test for abortion restrictions in 1992, with an opinion he co-wrote with now-retired justices Sandra Day O\u2019Connor and David Souter that pared back but didn\u2019t overrule the 1973 opinion recognizing abortion rights, Roe v. Wade.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 1992 case, Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. Casey, upheld several state regulations that deterred abortions, including a requirement that women seeking the procedure be informed about medical assistance for childbirth, child-support opportunities and adoption agencies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Justice Stephen Breyer said the California case presented a mirror image of that rule.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf a pro-life state can tell a doctor, \u2018You have to tell people about adoption,\u2019 why can\u2019t a pro-choice state tell a doctor, a facility, whatever it is, \u2018You have to tell people about abortion?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Farris, who is chief executive of the religious advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom that is representing the plaintiffs, said the state could require providing antiabortion material because it is ensuring that patients give informed consent before receiving the medical procedure of abortion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The California case arrived at the Supreme Court without a trial record, since the antiabortion centers appealed lower-court rulings that allowed the FACT Act to remain in effect while the litigation proceeds. If there aren\u2019t five votes to uphold those lower-court decisions, the justices could send the case back down with instructions to consider whether part of the FACT Act should be blocked during a full trial.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/justices-press-california-over-law-challenged-by-antiabortion-groups-1521588227<\/span><\/p>\n

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