Crisis Centers and Free Speech

The pro-choice motto: “free speech for me but not for thee”

 

By Dave Andrusko
As we’ve documented dozens of times, pro-abortionists hate the exercise of free speech—at least when it’s pro-lifers doing the talking.
That’s a minority position and the best explanation why judges around the country (with exceptions) have shot down the pro-abortionists’ attempts to compel pro-lifers to say what pro-abortionists have determined they ought to say.

This typically takes the form of laws to compel speech under the guise of “truth in advertising.” (Note: to NARAL, PPFA, Center for Reproductive Rights, etc.: free speech also includes the right not to be compelled to say something.)

To offer just one example, a Baltimore City Council ordinance required pregnancy centers to display signs stating they do not offer abortions or birth control. The Council offered a rationale favored by NARAL: that such centers had provided misleading information and the Council had a vested interest in protecting the public health by ensuring honest advertising of services.
That ordinance was shot down twice but is still being contested by the Baltimore City Council. (See “4th Circuit returns dispute over attack on CPCs to U.S. District Court”)
The pro-abortion implication is always that women helping centers are “hiding” something or “misleading” people.

 

 

But what about an ad now appearing in a new set of subway advertisements in New York City? What is written in big and bold letters? “Free Abortion Alternatives.”
What could possibly be clearer, less like to mislead people what the objective is than this? So why do the usual suspects accuse the ads of “Misleading Teens”? Stay with me on this one, it’s kind of circuitous.

Watching a loaded/slanted story at thehollywoodgossip.com, we learn that NARAL believes that the people behind the ads are “Trying to reach out to women considering abortions and attempting to stop or delay them from doing so.”

Pardon? It’s “misleading” that a pro-life organization tries to reach women who are considering abortion and attempt to stop or delay them from doing so?” (BTW: “stop” implies something just this side of force. “Persuade” is the accurate description.)
Scratched my head on that one until I heard the rest of the “argument”: If women come to the pro-life center they are “not met by medical professionals.” And?
What NARAL means, of course, is (as we hear) that “there is no direct and timely access to health care provided.” In other words, if they come to a pro-life center—and it is impossible from the ad to conclude it is something else—they don’t have “access” to abortion.
And for good measure NARAL insists that some of the brochures distributed to women– such as one demonstrating the link between induced abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer– represent “misinformation.”

Speaking of misleading, the story is replete with language intended to imply that what is straightforward is somehow nefarious. For example, where do those pro-lifers get off “plastering” these ads at “eye-level”—you know where people might actually SEE the ad?
The pro-choice motto never changes: free speech for me but not for thee.

Source: NRLC News