Crisis pregnancy centers breathe sigh of relief

In a rare pro-life win in Illinois, a law targeting crisis pregnancy centers has now gone by the wayside.

Dec 22, 2023

This month, the Illinois law aimed at targeting crisis pregnancy centers for what pro-choice critics called “deceptive activities”, was scrapped before ever materially taking effect in the state.

The law, passed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, attempted to curtail the rights of crisis pregnancy centers to advertise their services and to dissuade women from seeking abortion services.

Pro-life defenders of CPCs characterized the law as infringing on the free speech rights of those who run the facilities.

The law had been put on hold, and this month, Judge Iain Johnston of the U.S. District Court’s Northern District, Western Division, finalized an agreement reached by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the plaintiffs, including the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates and the Pro-Life Action League.

We have covered crisis pregnancy centers before. To refresh, the centers offer services like pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, prenatal support and often provide material postnatal support, like formula and diapers. However, the facilities do not offer contraceptives or provide abortions.

The centers are mostly religiously affiliated, typically run by Catholic groups or by Protestant churches.

The centers are often located near or even right next door to abortion facilities, with the hope that abortion-minded women might enter the crisis pregnancy center instead and find services that will help women carry their babies to term.

The deal reached between the state of Illinois and CPCs is a rare pro-life win in Illinois, and a rare post-Roe win in any state for pro-life advocates, who have faced defeat after defeat in state ballot initiatives.

As we’ve previously reported, Illinois has seen a spike in abortions post-Dobbs, likely attributable to women from states with abortion restrictions and bans coming to the state to receive abortion services. So, the win for crisis pregnancy centers comes at a critical time.

Crisis pregnancy centers have come under repeated scrutiny for providing information regarding the physical and psychological dangers of abortion. It was this information that the law in Illinois attempted to curtail.

Raoul has said he still intends to ty to use the state’s more generic consumer fraud law to target crisis pregnancy centers, so the threat against the centers may not be entirely over. However, the more draconian provisions of the law specifically targeting CPCs will not go into effect thanks to the agreement reached this month.

To find a crisis pregnancy center near you, consult the national map. And to help the efforts of the Southside Life House, a new center that offers even more expansive services that would help house mothers and their babies through pregnancy and the first three years of life, visit their website.

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