FREE SPEECH
provide certain information to their patients.
“If a state can lawfully require a doctor to tell a woman seeking an abortion about adoption services, why should it not be able, as here, to require a medical counselor to tell a woman seeking prenatal care or other reproductive health care about
childbirth and abortion services?” he asked.
“As the question suggests,” Breyer wrote, “there is no convincing reason to distinguish between information about adoption and information about abortion in this context. After all, the rule of law embodies evenhandedness, and ‘what is sauce for the goose is normally sauce for the gander.’”
Thomas responded that the 1992 decision was different because it concerned a medical procedure. Breyer
was unpersuaded.
“Really?” he asked. “No one doubts that choosing an abortion is a medical procedure that involves certain health risks. But the same is true of carrying a child to term and giving birth.”
Michael Farris, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the centers, said he welcomed the ruling.
“No one should be forced by the government to express a message that violates their convictions, especially on
deeply divisive subjects such as abortion,” he said. “In this case, the government used its power to force pro-life pregnancy centers to provide free advertising for abortion. The Supreme Court said that the government can’t do that and that it must respect prolife beliefs.”
The case, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, concerned a California law that requires centers operated by opponents of abortion to post notices that free or low-cost abortion, contraception and prenatal care are available to low-income women through public programs and to provide the phone number for more information.
The California Legislature found that the roughly 200 centers in the state used “intentionally deceptive advertising and counseling practices that often confuse, misinform, and even intimidate women from making fully-informed, time-sensitive decisions about critical health care.”