Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on crisis pregnancy centers and who’s leading the charge against them:
Xavier Becerra is not known to many outside of California, but his place in history is secure: as the state’s attorney general, he is the subject of oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a man who not only champions abortion rights, for any reason and at any time of pregnancy, he is determined to silence his foes. Indeed, his extreme animus against the pro-life community is on a par with his passion for abortion.
The California AG’s name appears in the case before the high court, National Institute of Family & Life Advocates v. Becerra. The lawsuit was brought by the pro-life institute after Becerra tried to effectively close down the state’s crisis pregnancy centers. He invoked the state’s FACT Act against these centers.
This law requires these abortion alternative centers to post a message that undercuts their purpose: they are mandated to tell their clients that the state offers subsidized medical care for eligible women, including abortion. The crisis pregnancy centers are objecting on the grounds that this constitutes “compelled speech,” and is therefore unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the most reliably radical federal court in the land, ruled that this mandate was merely a regulation of “professional speech,” and was therefore not subject to “strict scrutiny.” If the high court were to uphold this interpretation, it would have grave consequences for conscience rights: the government could arguably compel any message it declares to be in the public interest.
Becerra is the point man for this war on crisis pregnancy centers. Moreover, when he was in the Congress, he was the abortion industry’s best friend. Here is a sample of his voting record:
- YES on allowing human embryonic stem cell research
- NO on making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime
- NO on forbidding human cloning for reproductive & medical research
- NO on funding for health providers who don’t provide abortion info
- NO on banning Family Planning funding for abortion in U.S. aid abroad
- NO on banning partial-birth abortions
- NO on barring transporting minors to get an abortion
This is why Becerra received a 100% rating from NARAL and a 0% tally from the National Right to Life Committee.
Remember the pro-life activists who went undercover to film Planned Parenthood officials trafficking in aborted baby parts? Becerra brought felony charges against them, something so drastic that even the pro-abortion Los Angeles Times criticized him for “disturbing overreach.” In June 2017, a judge dismissed 14 of the 15 charges as legally insufficient. Becerra refiled all 15.
In October 2017, Becerra sued the Trump administration to block the conscience protections attendant to the Health and Human Services mandate. This was only one of more than two dozen lawsuits against the Trump administration.
This is what makes Becerra tick: He can’t do enough to war on unborn babies and crisis pregnancy centers.
