New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer began the new year by issuing seven subpoenas to crisis pregnancy centers; he extended the February 1 deadline to February 15. The centers were ordered to provide documentation that will enable the attorney general’s office to determine whether there is evidence of practicing medicine without a license or whether the centers have practiced deceptive advertising.
We raised the question because when Spitzer was a candidate for the post of attorney general, he protested a decision by Independent Health that would have excluded Catholic hospitals from its coverage. Spitzer blasted the decision as “heinous” and did so by holding a press conference in front of Mercy Hospital in Buffalo. Thus did he show his support for Catholic hospitals to decide their own health policies, including their right not to participate in abortions.
Yet no sooner had he been elected when he announced his opposition to hospital mergers of Catholic and secular facilities that honor Catholic prerogatives. It gets worse. “Catholics have also come to know Eliot Spitzer for his impassioned defense of laws that seek to repress the free speech rights of anti-abortion protesters,” we said on February 1. We cited as an example that Spitzer has sought to stop protesters from “demonstrating, standing, sitting, lying down or posting or carrying signs” on certain city blocks near abortion clinics and has even sought to ban “excessive noise.” Now Spitzer has targeted crisis pregnancy centers.
It is well known that Spitzer is in the pocket of NARAL (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League), a group so radical it has previously supported infanticide. Spitzer’s crusade to shut down crisis pregnancy centers has angered so many people, though, that his witch-hunt is in trouble. His counterpart in South Carolina, Attorney General Charlie Condon, and Nassau County District Attorney, Denis Dillon, have both weighed in against Spitzer. It’s time you did, too.
If Spitzer succeeds in New York, it won’t be long before attorneys general in other states follow suit. So regardless of where you live, please write to him at the following address:
Hon. Eliot Spitzer
Attorney General
New York State
The Capitol
Albany, NY 12224
You can e-mail him at: webmaster@smtpgw.oag.state.ny.us
