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As pregnancy centers have increasingly come under attack from Democrat lawmakers in recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case next week that could protect pregnancy centers from lawfare.
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Ahead of the court’s scheduled oral arguments in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Platkin on Dec. 2, women who have been involved with or helped by pregnancy centers are speaking out.
First Choice Women’s Resource Centers believes subpoenas issued by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin for donor and other information violated its First and 14th Amendment rights. The nonprofit asked the court in February of last year to intervene and the justices agreed to hear the case in June.
How Did the Case Get Here?
In November 2023, Platkin sent subpoenas to the center, which pro-life advocates call “unlawful” and “improper.”
As Alliance Defending Freedom explained, the subpoena demanded 10 years’ of documents, “including its statements on abortion pill reversal, information it provided to clients and donors, documents identifying personnel, copies of every First Choice solicitation and advertisement, and information related to outside organizations that First Choice works with.” Attorneys with ADF filed a lawsuit the following month.
Aimee Huber, the executive director at First Choice, recently told reporters that “there were no allegations of wrongdoing, it was simply a fishing expedition.” She also shared how “completely daunting” it was for her “small nonprofit” to comply.
Lincoln Wilson, an attorney with ADF, explained that “the issue the court is going to consider is whether First Choice is allowed to bring its constitutional challenge to the attorney general’s subpoena in federal court.” He added that “the heart of First Choice’s First Amendment challenge is its association rights,” which, of the many claims, is “the biggest one” First Choice has.
The Supreme Court has taken up similar cases in the past, and ruled in favor of plaintiffs who brought similar claims as First Choice. Wilson brought up the 1958 case of NAACP v. Alabama, a landmark case in which the court unanimously protected the right of association and made clear that the organization did not have to release its donor information, as it’s protected by the First Amendment. These rights were affirmed in 2021 with Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta.
“We think the same thing is going on here with the attorney general’s subpoena and his attempt to get that information from First Choice,” Wilson shared. “And we have a right to address those claims in federal court.”
Abortion and the Need for Pregnancy Resource Centers in New Jersey
New Jersey is friendly to abortion, with no gestational limits on the procedure. Huber pointed out that the state has the fifth-highest rate of abortion in the country, adding that the state “has done everything they could to make New Jersey a sanctuary state for abortion.”
“Since pregnancy centers like ours do not perform or refer for abortion, we are targets for a government that disagrees with our views. If our attorney general can bully us, it can happen in other states that promote abortion,” Huber warned. “It is our hope that our efforts will result in protection for other pregnancy centers across the nation.”
Donors are particularly important to pregnancy resource centers because, as Odalys Banks, the direct of centers at First Choice explained, their services are made possible thanks to private donors and volunteers. Many of them do so anonymously over privacy concerns and could pull back or even withdraw if they could no longer do so privately.
It’s Not Just New Jersey
While First Choice Women’s Resource Centers operate in New Jersey, pregnancy resource centers operate throughout the country.
The Daily Signal spoke with Rebekah Cohen Morris, the executive director of Aim Women’s Center in Steubenville, Ohio. Her center provides a range of services free of charge, from housing to ultrasounds to parenting classes. Women can earn points at such classes to shop for baby essentials at their boutique.
Above all, Cohen Morris emphasized her center aims to give women sense of “dignity” and how she’s “always thinking holistically” about them.
While Cohen Morris spoke to how the “current climate is very favorable to pregnancy resource centers in Ohio,” she pointed out that she is “definitely aware” of the potential threats to centers in the Buckeye State like those occurring in New Jersey. This is especially if a governor who is not pro-life comes into office.
With the wide range of services that PRCs, including Aim Women’s Center provides, staff like Cohen Morris are constantly busy assisting women. Should a center be hit with “frivolous requests,” as is the case in New Jersey, that takes away time from helping women who may be in crisis. “It really interferes with the amount of women that we can see and the quality of services that we could give,” Cohen Morris warned about the threat of being such a target.
If donor information is made public, Cohen Morris added, “you are putting the entire operation at risk potentially.”
The Daily Signal also spoke with Aisha Taylor, an Ohio-based mom who received support from a PRC in Michigan when she was pregnant with twins.
The center she received help from offered a similar “Baby Bucks” program for women to earn a way to acquire baby essentials by attending parenting classes.
Taylor emphasized that parenting was her choice, which the resource center helped her with. She referred to the “huge community support” and said the emotional support that she received from “an important village for [her] during a very difficult time,” was essential.
Without such assistance, Taylor revealed to The Daily Signal that she might not have been able to continue her pregnancy, which would have resulted in her being pressured by her twins’ father into having an abortion. “And in that moment, my choice was trying to be taken from me to make a decision that I did not want to make,” Taylor said about the pressure. Some studies show that a majority of women are pressured into abortions.
Beyond that sense of support for women who want to be parents, to resist that pressure, Taylor wondered who would fill the void in providing such resources.
Where the Case Is Expected to Go
Wilson told reporters that this case “matters not just to First Choice, [but] it matters to pregnancy centers around the country,” which “are all subject to the same kind of harassment.”
The attorney pointed out that “especially after the Dobbs [v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization] decision,” which sent the abortion issue back to the states, “many of [these centers] have suffered violence and vandalism.”
“And if the government can just go ahead on a pre-textual theory and demand that you turn over the names of your donors, then everyone in this country is less free,” Wilson said.
Should the court rule in favor of First Choice, Wilson believes the likely path will involve remanding the case to the district court to act on the constitutional claims “that it’s so far refused to decide.”
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This article was originally published at The Daily Signal. Photo Credit: Melina Mara – Pool/Getty Images.
