New York Attorney General Leticia James has no right to keep pro-life pregnancy centers from giving pregnant women that information.
Good news for the right to do actual women’s health care in America. A federal appeals court has ruled that New York Attorney General Leticia James has no right to keep pro-life pregnancy centers from telling women about abortion-pill reversal.
It’s one of the more ridiculous cases to have to bring to court in the first place: If a woman or girl who is pregnant and has taken the first abortion pill in the abortion cocktail — mifepristone — and has regrets and wants to go through with her pregnancy, a simple hormone treatment can sometimes undo the effects of mifepristone.
Mifepristone makes her uterus hostile to the developing baby. Progesterone is the most welcoming of the hormones to pregnancy.
The idea that abortion-pill reversal is some kind of junk science or dangerous would be laughable if it weren’t a coordinated campaign from the abortion industry to shut down any alternatives to abortion, and any signs that abortion wouldn’t always be a good for a woman and that invader the industry exists to destroy.
I’ve been in the middle of real-time conversation about abortion-pill reversal. It’s a source of hope when a mother thinks all hope is lost for her pregnancy, that she has already killed her child. There can be hope — if abortion enthusiasts in government and their infrastructure in the abortion-tainted medical community don’t take the day. They don’t today in the case of National Institute for Family and Life Advocates v. James, with the pro-life parties represented by Alliance Defending Freedom.
From the ADF release:
Last year, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued 11 faith-based, life-affirming pregnancy centers in state court in an effort to silence their speech about counteracting the effects of the abortion drug mifepristone using supplemental progesterone, a treatment commonly known as “abortion-pill reversal.” Her enforcement action alleges—despite contrary evidence—that those centers are spreading “false and misleading” information in violation of state business fraud laws. That speech-intimidation effort triggered the preemptive lawsuit that the two pregnancy centers filed here.
“Many women regret their abortions, and some change their minds after taking the first abortion drug and want to try to save their unborn babies’ lives. They should be allowed to hear about this option and make that choice,” said ADF Senior Counsel Caroline Lindsay, who argued before the court. “The court is correct to affirm that women in New York have the right to access information about safe and effective supplemental progesterone through their local pregnancy centers, regardless of what the attorney general may personally believe. The First Amendment clearly protects the right to speak and hear about this potentially life-saving option.”
In August 2024, the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, Gianna’s House, and Options Care Center sued in federal court to protect their First Amendment right to tell women about the life-saving potential of supplemental progesterone. A federal district court ruled in their favor, halting the attorney general from violating their constitutional right to freedom of speech while the case proceeded. James then appealed National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. James to the 2nd Circuit.
“The district court correctly determined that the speech at issue is noncommercial because . . . the speech is religiously and morally motivated, the NIFLA plaintiffs receive no remuneration or other financial benefit for engaging in it, and, as the NIFLA plaintiffs do not provide APR themselves, the speech serves only to provide the public with information about APR and access to third-party providers that can offer APR,” the court wrote in its opinion.
We’ve seen this play out before, in a Colorado attack on the same procedure — this is really about demonizing pregnancy-care centers and pro-life medical centers — and Becket won in August in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. I talked with one of the plaintiffs in the California case, Dede Chism. She is one of the amazingly giving and gracious and excellent co-founders of the Bella network of medical clinics.
I should add: NIFLA is one of those long-in-the-trenches stalwarts in the background of the pro-life movement. It rarely makes headlines, and I’m pretty sure it likes it that way. But these are among the long-suffering unsung heroes of the greatest human-rights cause of our lives. Young millennial and Gen Z and all the rest of the whippersnappers, never forget! Even when it feels like the challenges in combatting the culture of death and building a culture of life are more difficult than ever, there is a patrimony, as Bill Buckley would say, to be grateful for and to build on.
’Tis the season to give thanks: Life itself owes people willing to do this work, willing to take the time to fight for the right to do it, and the lawyers willing to get victories in courts.