The Evil That Governments Do

We’re pro-choice, and if you help people make those choices, we’ll sue your ass.

I sometimes think that I can’t be surprised by an evil that a government in the United States does. Occasionally I get surprised.

In the Friday, July 31 issue of the Wall Street Journal (July 30 electronically) is a guest op/ed by Salvatore J. Cordileone and Michael C. Barber titled “California’s Case Against Second Chances.” It tells the story of a young woman named Elizabeth Barrett who took a pill to induce an abortion. Then she quickly changed her mind. She did an online search on how to reverse the pill’s effect and found an organization called Heartbeat International. It’s a non-profit Christian organization that refers women in such circumstances to licensed doctors. Fortunately, Ms. Barrett acted in time and now has a healthy girl.

A young woman changed her mind about a momentous decision and acted on it quickly enough to get the outcome she wanted.

That’s good news, right?

Well, not to Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California. The authors write:

In an extraordinary case now unfolding at trial in state court in Oakland, California’s attorney general seeks an injunction and up to $20 million in fines against Heartbeat International and another small pro-life Christian nonprofit, RealOptions. Their offense is telling women who regret swallowing the abortion pill that there is a medical treatment that can sometimes save their babies.

The prosecutors call it consumer fraud. Huh? Who was defrauded?

Here’s how my Hoover colleague and eminent legal scholar Michael McConnell puts the issue:

This novel use of California’s commercial-fraud statute seems designed to intimidate nonprofit organizations that—with no hope of commercial gain—seek to educate the public about services that are lawful but contrary to the ideological preferences of the government.

It turns out that this isn’t a one-off. Letitia James, the attorney general for New York, is pursuing Heartbeat International also.

Interestingly, the authors note that Ms. Barrett had thought that people at the clinic would help her think through her options. Not quite. Instead, write the authors, “they urged her to take the abortion pill that day.”

The people at the clinic were pro-choice as long as the patients chose abortion.

That’s bad enough. But bringing a multi-million-dollar suit against an organization that helps people with their choices? That’s pure evil.