Because of the invaluable work of pregnancy centers (PCs), thousands of underserved women and families are provided millions of dollars’ worth of free, essential pregnancy and postpartum services each year. Despite PC’s life-saving efforts, United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) have reintroduced a bill that targets PCs for “deceptive advertising.” First introduced in 2022, the Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation (SAD) Act accuses PCs of “routinely rely[ing] on deceptive advertising practices to trick pregnant women into thinking they offer comprehensive reproductive health care, only to discourage them from getting abortions.”
Under the discriminatory law, PCs could be fined up to $100,000 for each “deceptive advertising” violation subject to adjustment for inflation, or fifty percent of their revenue from the previous twelve months. Most PCs run on shoestring budgets and rely on the support of generous donors. Surely, the SAD Act’s hefty fines would shut center’s doors stripping women, men, and families of essential services and abandoning them in their time of need.
Pregnancy Centers Are Vital to Women’s Health
The PC movement began in the late 1960s to help vulnerable women and men facing unplanned pregnancies. Today, there are more than 2,500 PCs across the country that provide services including pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, STI and STD testing, material assistance such as baby clothes and diapers, educational classes, community referrals, and so much more. These services are typically provided at no cost to clients.
Pregnancy centers provide their comprehensive list of services with high standards of care. For example, Care Net has more than 1,200 affiliate PCs across the country with each center agreeing to abide by “Pregnancy Center Standards of Affiliation,” a list of fifteen guidelines. Care Net centers that offer medical services must operate “under the authority and direction of a licensed physician who is in good standing with the physician’s state licensing board,” use licensed and trained medical professionals when conducting medical procedures, keep client information confidential, and communicate and advertise with both truthfulness and honesty.
Senator Warren’s Bill Would Discriminate Against Pro-Life Views
Senator Warren has previously called for shutting the doors of PCs across the country and that’s exactly what her bill aims to do. A 2022 report, Hope for a New Generation, found that in 2022, “pregnancy centers met with clients over 16 million times, both in person and virtually, with an estimated total service and goods value of at least $358 million annually.” However, the bill ignores these astounding statistics in order to silence and close down PCs that uphold the sanctity of life and value of the unborn simply because of PCs’ pro-life views.
The attempt to control and silence PCs through government regulation is nothing new. In 2015, California passed the “Reproductive FACT Act” forcing medical PCs to tell clients about the state’s abortion services. The law also forced non-medical PCs to provide a disclosure that the PC was unlicensed and did not provide medical services. The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), a network of pregnancy centers, and two PCs in CA filed a lawsuit against the discriminatory law. The NIFLA v. Becerra case reached the Supreme Court where the Justices ruled 5-4 in favor of PCs’ First Amendment freedoms.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy referred to the Act as “viewpoint discrimination” and stated that the law is a “paradigmatic example of the serious threat presented when government seeks to impose its own message in the place of individual speech, thought, and expression.”
The SAD Act is a prime example of the viewpoint discrimination that Justice Kennedy referenced as the Act does not hold abortion clinics to the same criteria. Instead, the Act solely targets PCs because of their pro-life views—both that terminating a human being in the womb is wrong and supporting and serving mothers in need is the right course of action. Rather than discrediting and silencing the work of PCs and stripping underserved communities of free pregnancy-related services, Senator Warren and her colleagues should place an emphasis on ensuring that pregnant women in difficult situations have access to the support and help that they need.
