By Sue Chess
Executive Director
June 27, 2018 - Our social medias, emails, and newsfeeds have blown up this morning with the incredible, joyful, and awesome news that life and liberty won today! To more clearly show you why it was such big news, let me explain.
We live in a “world within a world” here at Care Net. We
are a little like Who-ville in “Horton Hears a Who.” We walk alongside our clients facing crisis
after crisis as they face the struggles of meeting the needs of their
families. We are there for them and they
know it. In fact, they tell their
friends about us, which is one of the main ways we fill our appointment
slots.
We walk on the “client” side with them but all the while the
“admin” lives an alternate reality, a Who-ville existence where many would rather
we’d stay hidden or go away and others would like to destroy completely. For
our clients we work carefully to be medically accurate, to keep our
professional processes full of integrity, to run a business that is both legal,
honest, and true, and to pay our bills without ever expecting a client to
help. We don’t just do this because it
is best practices but also because there is a hostile culture of death which is
driven by abortion money trying always to bring us down. Just like the people
in Who-ville had enemies in the jungle, so do we.
The admin inner world is not understood by many. Here we are in a battle. We work closely with organizations and are
deeply grateful to them for arming, preparing, and supporting us. Good folks like Care Net National https://www.care-net.org/, National
Institute of Family and Life Advocates or NIFLA https://nifla.org/
, Heartbeat International https://www.heartbeatinternational.org/ and Alliance Defending Freedom https://www.adflegal.org/. They give us guidance in what we can and
cannot do legally as we walk a tightrope in service to families facing unplanned
pregnancies and students involved in risky behavior. It is a true saying that we care about the
whole family. We are 100% prolife because we know it to be right not just a right. Abortion hurts women and destroys
children. It is not just that God is
pro-life, although that would be enough.
It is also that the ramifications upon humanity go so much further than what
a dishonest society shows. We see that
truth every day.
With that background of our world you may better
understand just how much a certain SCOTUS case ruling on June 26, 2018 on NIFLA
v. Becerra affects the ongoing existence of every pregnancy resource center
such as Care Net.
Here is the case summary from NIFLA:
In 2015 California passed AB 775, the so-called "Reproductive FACT
Act.” This law mandates that medical pro-life pregnancy centers provide written
or digital information to their patients - such as a sign in the waiting room -
on how to obtain a state-funded abortion. This means that nonprofit pro-life
medical clinics as well as their staff and volunteers are being forced to
violate their consciences - an outright violation of their First Amendment
rights.
In defense of the 135 California pregnancy centers that it represents,
NIFLA filed a lawsuit challenging this legislation. Arguments for this landmark
pro-life free speech case were heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on March 20,
2018.
We realize that this law would so infringe and violate
our beliefs that if it continued without check, the enemies of the sanctity of
human life would see that it swept across the land. Women facing an unplanned
pregnancy would no longer have a safe place to explore all options. Simply stated it was huge!
Today the Supreme Court ruled! Here was NIFLA’s announcement:
NIFLA has been fighting the good fight in courts and today we are
grateful to say that free speech lives!
In a 5-4 decision, the justices have rightly supported the freedom of
speech of over 100 pro-life pregnancy centers and medical clinics in
California.
“Today’s decision is a tremendous win not only for free speech but for
human life,” said Jor-El Godsey, president of Heartbeat International. Thanks to today’s ruling, California’s 200
plus pregnancy centers can continue to serve women and children, unburdened by
the unconscionable demands of the abortion lobby. This is an unquestionably major triumph for
U.S. pregnancy centers working to save families from the sting of abortion.”
Today’s ruling is the latest—and most significant—court victory for
pro-life pregnancy centers which have been the target of similarly onerous free
speech restrictions in New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Texas, Hawaii, and Illinois.
Today the little people of Who-ville won in more ways than
one.