Darren Bailey celebrates judge decision impinging pregnancy crisis center speech | Darren Bailey for Congress Facebook page
Darren Bailey celebrates judge decision impinging pregnancy crisis center speech | Darren Bailey for Congress Facebook page
Darren Bailey, who is running for the Illinois Congressional District 12 seat, said he is celebrating a federal court decision, reported by Fox News, temporarily halting a bill that would limit the speech of pregnancy centers that offer alternatives to abortion. The law sets limits on speech for pregnancy crisis centers that offer an alternative to abortion.
“Elections matter. A judge appointed by President Trump blocks the radical left’s law targeting crisis pregnancy centers. This fight is far from over. We need leaders who protect life and courageously stand up and fight for families,” Bailey, a former state senator who was the GOP’s pick for governor in 2022, said on Facebook.
“Justice Scalia once said that he wished all federal judges were given a stamp that read ’stupid but constitutional. SB 1909 is both stupid and very likely unconstitutional,” Judge Iain Johnson said in issuing his order, WTTW reported.
The judge’s ruling adds fuel to an ongoing debate between abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion groups over the free speech rights of these centers, which provide support to pregnant individuals.
The lawsuit was filed by the Thomas More Society, seeking to stop the enforcement of SB 1909. The law "expands Illinois’ longstanding consumer fraud law to explicitly include crisis pregnancy centers," a Capitol News Illinois story said. Supporters of the law claim that pregnancy crisis centers use deceptive tactics to dissuade clients from obtaining abortions.
“In short, the law openly targets alleged pro-life ‘misinformation’ on the basis that pro-life views conflict with Illinois’s rampant pro-abortion ideology,” the Thomas More Society wrote on its website. “But in doing so the law runs headlong into bedrock protections of the First Amendment, which prohibit government from cutting off one side of ongoing controversies by censoring speech with which it disagrees, and from discriminating against religiously motivated speech,” the society wrote. “The ‘Deceptive Practices of Limited Services Pregnancy Centers Act’ is a blatant attempt to stamp out access to vital women’s pregnancy resources across the state, simply because pregnancy help centers do not provide abortions and “emergency contraception,” the More website said.
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