
CV NEWS FEED // Pro-life pregnancy centers in Massachusetts are seeking legal action against the state over a $1 million taxpayer-funded “smear” campaign launched by Gov. Maura Healy.
The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is representing the pro-life pregnancy center Your Options Medical (YOM) in a lawsuit over the social media and ad campaign Healy began in June in which she urged pregnant women to avoid the centers over alleged “misinformation.”
YOM has four locations across the state.
The lawsuit names Healy, the Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation and its executive director, Rebecca Hart Holder.
As AP News reported, Healy’s campaign targeted the centers for being “anti-abortion,” further insisting that the centers “[are] not to be trusted for comprehensive reproductive health care.”
Though AP notes that the governor’s expansive efforts included social media ads, as well as billboard, radio, and bus ads, the ACLJ claims that the campaign’s efforts ran even further.
“Our lawsuit alleges that the state officials engaged in an overt viewpoint-based discrimination campaign—including harassment, suppression, and threats against YOM and other [Pregnancy Resource Centers],” ACLJ stated in an August 20 news release.
The law firm continued:
Directed by Maura Healy, this pro-abortion smear campaign involves selective law enforcement prosecution, public threats, and even a state-sponsored advertising campaign with a singular goal to deprive YOM and their counterparts of the First Amendment rights to voice freely their religious and political viewpoints regarding the sanctity of human life.
The lawsuit advances three central claims related to free speech, free exercise of religion, and equal protection, according to the release.
ACLJ also plans to launch its own “multi pronged media campaign” in defense of YOM and pro-life pregnancy centers across the state, in order to “enable them to continue their lifesaving work without harassment and/or government interference.”
