George Leef’s latest Forbes column focuses on a recent court ruling that boosted defenders of religious liberty.
One reason why ADF has earned the enmity of SPLC (and many others on the Left) is the success it has had in litigating against overreaching government policies that infringe upon Americans’ constitutional rights. Such a case is National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Rauner.
That case arose because last year Illinois amended its 1977 Healthcare Right of Conscience Act, (HCRCA) a law enacted to “respect and protect the right of conscience of all persons who refuse to act contrary to their conscience in providing health care services and medical care.” The law specified that no healthcare provider could be held criminally or civilly liable for refusing to counsel or participate in any service that is contrary to his conscience.
But the law as recently amended provides that the protection of the HCRCA is lost to healthcare providers unless they adopt certain protocols that boil down to this: those who object to abortions must inform pregnant women about the availability of abortion, its possible benefits, and to provide them with information about other clinics “they reasonably believe may offer” abortions. In short the law now says: Either do abortions or give women referrals to places that do.
The most glaring problem with the new law is that it compels Americans to speak. The First Amendment doesn’t just keep the government from censoring speech or punishing people for saying what officials don’t like, it also prevents government from forcing people to speak against their will. But that is exactly what the Illinois law now does.
