‘Crisis pregnancy centers’ sue Massachusetts for campaign targeting their anti-abortion practices
BOSTON — Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey launched a $1 million taxpayer-funded initiative in June aimed at discouraging people from seeking help at “crisis pregnancy centers,” which are typically religiously affiliated and advise clients not to have an abortion.
The campaign includes ads on social media, billboards, radio and buses, warning people to avoid the centers – which the government calls “anti-abortion” – and saying they cannot be trusted to provide comprehensive reproductive health care.
Operators of the center are resisting, and are working with a national conservative law firm to challenge the campaign, which they say infringes on their constitutional rights. The Washington-based American Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit in federal court earlier this month on behalf of Your Options Medical, which operates four anti-abortion pregnancy clinics in the eastern part of the state.
The lawsuit names Healey, Robert Goldstein, commissioner of the state Department of Health and Human Services, and Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation, a nonprofit focused on educating the public about equal access to reproductive health care.
The lawsuit alleges that the state initiative amounts to an unconstitutional violation of the free speech and equal protection rights of those who operate the pregnancy crisis centers. The plaintiffs also allege that the state is subjecting them to religious discrimination.
“This campaign includes selective law enforcement prosecution, public threats, and even a state-sponsored advertising campaign with a single purpose: to deprive YOM and similar groups of their First Amendment rights to freely express their religious and political views regarding the sanctity of human life in the context of the highly controversial issue of abortion,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also says the state has partnered with “a pro-abortion group” — the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation — to discredit and dismantle every “crisis pregnancy center” in the state. The state’s ad campaign was created by the Department of Public Health and the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation.
Healey said the lawsuit will not deter the state.
“We continue to stand strong for reproductive freedom here in Massachusetts,” Healey, a Democrat and former state attorney general, said this week.
“I’m not surprised to see another frivolous lawsuit challenging that law. But we’re prepared for that and the attorneys will handle that,” she added. “We want to make sure that women in this state have access to the care that they and their families need.”
The Department of Public Health declined to comment. Reproductive Equity Now Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Goldstein, the DPH commissioner, defended the initiative when it was first announced.
“Every day, people from across the state walk into abortion clinics without realizing that these facilities pose as comprehensive medical care and pose a significant risk to the health and well-being of those seeking help,” he said.
Your Options Medical has been licensed by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health since 1999, and in addition to its brick-and-mortar clinics, YOM owns and operates the only “pro-life mobile medical unit” in the state, the group’s attorneys said.
There are more than 30 anti-abortion pregnancy centers in the state. The Healey administration has described its effort to warn residents of this as the “first public education campaign in the country highlighting the dangers and potential harm of anti-abortion centers.”
Among those harmful consequences, the state says, are centers claiming to provide abortion care without actually performing abortions; delaying medical care until it is too late for an abortion; and relying on untrained staff or volunteers who are not expected to adhere to ethical codes or maintain patient records.
The centers call the accusations false.
State officials have set up a separate website to help residents access reproductive health care. The Reproductive Equity Now Foundation has also an online map designed to warn those in need of an abortion about what the organization describes as “fake abortion clinics.”
The lawsuit asks the court to order the state and other parties involved in the ads to cease all public campaigns that falsely accuse YOM of misconduct or pose a threat to public safety.
States have responded differently to anti-pregnancy abortion clinics after the Supreme Court in 2022 ended constitutional protections for abortion.
Lawmakers in predominantly red states have approved millions for the organizations. A West Virginia coalition that is helping to build a network of anti-abortion pregnancy centers received $1 million in tax money last year to distribute to organizations that encourage people not to terminate their pregnancies.
In states with a democratically oriented population, officials try to restrict the organizations.
California last year banned an anti-abortion group and a chain of anti-abortion advice centersand said the organizations misled women when they offered them unproven treatments to reverse medical abortions.
In Illinois, lawmakers passed a new law last year, signed by the governor, that gives the state the ability to penalize anti-abortion counseling centers that use deception to prevent clients from undergoing the procedure.
U.S. District Judge Iain Johnston quickly blocked that law and described it as “a painful and flagrant violation of the First Amendment.”