California's $20 Million Attempt To Silence Medical Speech

Authored by Danielle White via RealClearPolitics,

In a trial set to begin June 24, California's Attorney General Rob Bonta is asking a court to do something that should alarm every American, regardless of where they stand on abortion: punish nonprofit organizations with ruinous fines for speaking about a lawful medical treatment.

The target is not fraud. These charities offer their services for free.

It is not patient harm. There is no evidence of any patient being harmed.

It is not even illegal conduct. The underlying treatment remains perfectly legal.

The target is speech.

Heartbeat International and Real Options are pro-life nonprofits that provide information and care to women who first take the abortion drug but regret that choice and want to continue their pregnancies. California wants to impose penalties approaching $20 million because these charities have dared to tell women that another option may exist.

Twenty million dollars. That number alone should tell us what this case is really about.

No reasonable observer can believe that bankrupting charities is a proportionate response to truthful and non-misleading statements about a free service designed to help a woman exercise her constitutional right to continue her pregnancy. This is not consumer protection. It is political warfare conducted through the machinery of a government that wishes to silence speech it does not like.

What's most remarkable is what California cannot prove.

After years of investigation, subpoenas, discovery, and litigation, the attorney general has failed to identify a single woman harmed by APR treatment. Not one. No parade of victims. No evidence of widespread deception. He set up a website practically begging for complaints and still could not muster a single woman claiming she was misled or harmed.

Instead, seven women have publicly shared the stories of how Heartbeat International and Real Options helped them successfully reverse their abortions. Three mothers are slated to testify from the stand about their joy at reversing their unwanted abortions.

Still, the state asks the court to punish the very charities who helped these women continue their wanted pregnancies simply because government lawyers disagree with their viewpoint on the scientific evidence regarding APR.

That is a dangerous precedent.

Scientific disagreement is not fraud. If it were, much of modern medicine would not exist. Medical consensus is not handed down from on high. It evolves. Researchers debate. Physicians challenge prevailing views. Studies are published, criticized, replicated, and revised.

The proper response to disputed science is more debate, more research, and more evidence - not government censorship backed by eight-figure penalties.

Yet that is precisely what California seeks.

The state is asking the court to declare that one side of a scientific debate may speak freely while the other side risks financial destruction. Today, the target happens to be pro-life organizations. Tomorrow, it could be anyone whose views fall out of favor with those holding political power or anyone who dares to innovate in the medical field.

And make no mistake: This lawsuit did not emerge in a vacuum.

Since the Dobbs decision, officials across the country have openly pledged to target pregnancy centers and pro-life organizations. California's attorney general has repeatedly attacked what he calls "crisis pregnancy centers." Against that backdrop, it is fanciful to view this lawsuit as a neutral effort to protect consumers. It looks exactly like an attempt to silence disfavored viewpoints through the coercive power of the state.

The irony is impossible to miss. Politicians who routinely invoke the language of "choice" now seek to suppress information that women are seeking in order to exercise their choice to withdraw their consent to their in-progress abortions and continue their wanted pregnancies.

This lawsuit demonstrates that AG Bonta does not stand for reproductive choice. He stands for abortions - wanted or unwanted.

In fact, according to AG Bonta in his trial brief filed last week, "That Defendants [Heartbeat International and Real Options] provided hope to these individuals only underscores the seriousness of their misconduct." California argues that merely providing hope to women who wish to continue their pregnancies after they start an unwanted abortion is damaging.

A government confident in its position does not need censorship. It does not need speech codes. It does not need multi-million-dollar penalties for those who hold different views. It does not ask a court to issue a financial death penalty for charities whose mission is to provide free services and preserve life.

California has chosen suppression over science and punishment over persuasion.

The court should reject that effort. Not merely to protect Heartbeat International and Real Options, but to protect the principle that government officials do not get to decide which side of a scientific or moral debate is allowed to speak.

Especially when a woman's right to continue her pregnancy and her unborn child's life hang in the balance.

Danielle White, Esq., is general counsel for Heartbeat International.