Chicago City Wire

Louis Artiaga is celebrating a federal court’s decision temporarily halting a bill a bill that would limit the speech of pregnancy centers that offer alternatives to abortion. Artiaga is director of advancement at Midtown Educational Foundation in Chicago.

“U.S. District Judge Johnston called the new Illinois law to shut down life-affirming pregnancy centers ‘both stupid & very likely unconstitutional’ & said it represented “a blatant example” of govt deciding ‘whose speech is sanctionable & whose speech is immunized,’” Artiaga said in a Facebook post. “The law ‘is likely classic content & viewpoint discrimination prohibited by the First Amendment.’ Did you hear that JB & Kwame?”

Judge Iain Johnston’s ruling on the matter was a harsh rebuke of the Illinois lawmakers who passed the bill, Capitol News Illinois reported. 

“Justice Scalia once said that he wished all federal judges were given a stamp that read ’stupid but constitutional,’” Johnston said to Capitol News Illinois. “SB 1909 is both stupid and very likely unconstitutional.”

The judge’s ruling, based on First Amendment grounds, has ignited a debate between abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion groups over the free speech rights of these centers, which provide support to pregnant individuals, according to WTTW. The lawsuit was launched by Thomas More Society to stop SB 1909 which provided a legal mechanism to block pregnancy resource centers from seeking to attract would-be mothers that may be considering getting an abortion.

The judge issued a preliminary injunction on the grounds that the law likely violated the First Amendment, causing a conflict between abortion rights advocates who claim these centers employ deceptive tactics and anti-abortion groups asserting their First Amendment rights, WTTW reported.

“In short, the law openly targets alleged pro-life ‘misinformation’ on the basis that 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 ‘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 organization continued.