ABORTION/CALIFORNIA/SUPREME COURT: “Supreme Court justices on Tuesday [3-20-18] questioned the intent of a California law that the state says aims to inform pregnant women of their rights to reproductive health care, but antiabortion groups say forces them to promote abortion.
The 2015 law requires facilities offering pregnancy-related services—including crisis pregnancy centers that seek to persuade women to carry to term—to post a notice about the state’s free and low-cost family planning programs, which include abortion.
Justice Samuel Alito suggested the law may have been designed to blunt the antiabortion message that such centers seek to deliver. While ostensibly covering hundreds of facilities across the state, the law contains many ‘crazy exemptions’ that all point the same way, he said… California’s lawyer, Joshua Klein, conceded that many facilities that serve pregnant women, including those participating in Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid, are exempt from the requirement. But that is because they already provide the programs listed in the notice, he said… California says that some women are misled or confused by facilities that seem like medical centers but don’t provide ‘comprehensive’ reproductive health care, or perhaps any medical care at all. In addition to requiring licensed facilities to post the notice, the law, also requires unlicensed antiabortion centers to post statements disclosing they aren’t medical clinics.“
-Jess Bravin, “Justices Press California Over Law Challenged by Antiabortion Groups,” The Wall Street Journal online, Mar. 20, 2018 07:23pm