Justices antsy about California pregnancy-center law

WASHINGTON — A skeptical Supreme Court took aim Tuesday at a California law that forces anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion.

A ruling striking down the law could doom similar laws in Hawaii and Illinois and also call into question laws in other states that seek to regulate doctors’ speech.

Both conservative and liberal justices raised questions about the California law, which took effect in 2016. Centers that are licensed by the state must tell clients about the availability of contraception, abortion and pre-natal care, at little or no cost.

The centers say they are being singled out and forced to deliver a message with which they disagree. California says the law is needed to let poor women know all their options.

At different points in the arguments, liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said they were troubled by aspects of the California law.

Kagan even said it seemed the state had “gerrymandered” the law, a term usually used in the context of political redistricting, to target the anti-abortion centers.

Justice Samuel Alito, a likely vote for the centers, said the state’s criteria about which centers are covered by the law seemed to take in only “pro-life clinics.”

“When you put all this together, you get a very suspicious pattern,” Alito said.

Joshua Klein, California’s deputy solicitor general, said the state is trying to help poor, pregnant women, not target the centers. The idea is to let a woman who visits a crisis pregnancy center know that “her financial circumstance does not make her unable to access alternative and supplemental care, including full prenatal and delivery care.”

The court has previously upheld requirements that doctors in abortion clinics must tell patients about alternatives to abortion.

“If a pro-life state can tell a doctor you have to tell people about adoption, why can’t a pro-choice state say you have to tell people about an abortion?” Justice Stephen Breyer asked Michael Farris, representing the centers.

Farris replied that the Supreme Court has recognized that doctors must obtain a patient’s informed consent about the risks and alternatives of medical procedures, including abortions.

The abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice California was a prime sponsor of the California law. NARAL contends that the centers mislead women about their options and try to pressure them to forgo abortion.

California’s law was challenged by the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, an organization with ties to 1,500 pregnancy centers nationwide and 140 in California.