A federal judge blocked a law that would restrict pro-life crisis pregnancy centers on the basis of alleged "deceptive practices" that encourage mothers to choose life rather than abortion, Breitbart reported. The Illinois law was passed last week.
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of several pro-life groups, including the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates. Attorneys from the Catholic public policy advocacy firm Thomas More Society sued Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
On Thursday, Judge Iain Johnston in the U.S. District Court Northern District of Illinois issued the injunction. This will temporarily allow the pro-life centers to continue to advertise and counsel their patients as they see fit.
Peter Breen, the executive vice president and head of litigation for the Thomas More Society, championed the decision in a statement released after the ruling. "Free Speech won today in the Land of Lincoln — pro-life advocates across Illinois can breathe a sigh of relief they won’t be pursued for ‘misinformation’ by Attorney General Kwame Raoul," he wrote.
"Across the nation, pregnancy help ministries are being discriminated against by laws that target their life-affirming work," Breen continued. "The injunction granted today sends a strong, clear message to the country that the First Amendment protects pro-life speech."
The law went into effect on July 27 on the basis that residents of Illinois were "misled" by these crisis pregnancy centers that gave women other options besides abortion. The law states the government "has an interest to protect against deceptive, fraudulent, and misleading advertising and practices that interfere with" a woman's right to decide to take the life of her unborn child.
The law would impose a fine of up to $50,000 for anyone the attorney general's office deemed to have deceived or left out any "material fact" related to pregnancy. This language leaves the pro-life pregnancy centers vulnerable to the whims of the left-leaning administration.
Democrat Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who signed the bill last week, claimed this was about informed choice. "Women need access to comprehensive, fact-based healthcare when making critical decision about their own health — not manipulation or misinformation from politically motivated, non-medical actors," Pritzker said in a statement when signing the law.
"By empowering the Attorney General’s office to battle deceptive practices, we’re ensuring Illinoisans can make their own decisions about their bodies using accurate and safe information." However, abortion clinics are not held to that same standard.
Providers like Planned Parenthood routinely refer to babies in the womb as "products of conception," Fox News reported. Meanwhile, abortion clinics make big money by selling body parts that betray such an Orwellian term.
One notable practitioner Dr. Deborah Nucatola, the medical director who admitted she would "crush" fetuses carefully so the tissue could still be harvested, spoke about seeing the tiny hearts beating before harvesting the tissue. Nucatola mentioned it matter-of-factly while denying they harvested tissue from unborn babies in her testimony uncovered in a 2020 sting by the Center for Medical Progress.
While trying to claim that she never dissected a live baby to retrieve tissue, Nucatola recounted times seeing a heart still beating. "There are -- I can see hearts that are in -- not in an intact POC [product of conception] that are beating independently, but they're not attached to anything," she claimed.
The abortion industry uses euphemisms to willfully conceal the truth about what happens in those clinics. Still, it is the pro-life pregnancy centers that states like Illinois are trying to shut down.
Abortion is morally wrong. However, if states are going to give women the right to kill their children, they should be given a complete picture of their options, including choosing life.
