Tuesday Was a Good Day for Life at the Supreme Court

The key exchange during the oral arguments in the case involving the campaign by New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew Platkin, against pro-life pregnancy centers there, was when Justice Clarence Thomas asked if there had been any actual complaints against First Choice Women’s Resource Centers which had caused the AG to issue a subpoena request for donor information. Nope:

You know it’s a good day for the pro-life cause when you see the initial headline on a CNN post looks like it was a simple, “Supreme Court skeptical of New Jersey’s subpoena of faith-based pregnancy centers.”

By the time I clicked through, it had become “Supreme Court flicks at First Amendment concerns with state’s subpoena of faith-based pregnancy centers.” That this is all just part of a vindictive campaign is clear, and seemed so during the oral arguments. And some of the questioning from some of the liberal justices was insulting to the intelligence:

This will clearly be another Alliance Defending Freedom win at the Court, but it, won’t, of course, be the end of the campaign to demonize and ultimately shut down alternatives to abortion. Be vigilant in your support not only of freedom, but your local pregnancy-resource center, maternity home, or pro-life medical clinic. They need you. And for women and their babies, facing all the pressures of an expectation to abort in all too many circumstances, it is, of course, a matter of life and death that these resources exist and multiply rather than be subtracted by administrations hostile to innocent human life in blue states.

(My interview from a few months ago with Aimee Huber from First Choice and Erin Hawley, who argued the case, is here.)