New York: Federal Court Rules Pro-Life Groups Can Promote Reversal of Abortion Pill Services
by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – A federal court ruled Tuesday that, while a related lawsuit proceeds, nonprofit pro-life pregnancy centers in New York are allowed to tell women that the effects of abortion pill drugs can be safely reversed for a healthy pregnancy to continue, CBN News reports.
The case arose after New York’s Democratic Attorney General Letitia James filed suit against the pro-life group Heartbeat International (HBI) and 11 crisis pregnancy centers to prevent them from promoting abortion pill reversal services, CBN News said.
“Heartbeat International and the other crisis pregnancy center defendants are spreading dangerous misinformation by advertising ‘abortion reversals’ without any medical and scientific proof,” James said in a press release. “Amid the increase in attacks on reproductive health care nationwide, we must protect pregnant people’s right to make safe, well-informed decisions about their health.”
In response, the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom law firm filed a countersuit in defense of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, Gianna’s House, and Options Care Center, CBN News said.
“Women in New York have literally saved their babies from an in-progress chemical drug abortion because they had access to information through their local pregnancy centers about using safe and effective progesterone for abortion pill reversal,” ADF Senior Counsel Caleb Dalton said in a statement. “But the attorney general tried to deny women the opportunity to even hear about this life-saving option.”
Ruling in favor of the pro-life organizations, District Judge John L. Sinatra, Jr. said New York cannot suppress the pro-lifers’ constitutional right to free speech.
“The First Amendment protects Plaintiffs’ right to speak freely about {abortion pill reversal} protocol and, more specifically, to say that it is safe and effective for a pregnant woman to use in consultation with her doctor,” Sinatra wrote.
“Indeed, the ‘very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion.’ …And this is particularly true ‘in the fields of medicine and public health, where information can save lives.'”