Pro-life pregnancy centres cannot be forced to work against their “very mission” of protecting unborn children by hiring pro-abortionists, a US federal appeals court has ruled.
In 2019, New York state effectively legalised abortion up to birth for any reason, while also making it illegal for organisations to make employment decisions on the basis of an employee’s “reproductive health” choices, such as aborting their baby.
In 2021, a lower court dismissed the Evergreen Association’s challenge against the employment restrictions. But the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City has now ruled that the organisation’s pro-life centres cannot be forced to hire staff who would undermine its pro-life message.
‘Major victory’
The Evergreen Association, which has operated a network of Expectant Mother Care FrontLine Pregnancy Centers in New York City since 1985, says it has saved 43,000 babies from abortion.
Through its staff, the organisation “professes and promotes the moral and religious belief that all human life is equally valuable and deserving of protection, from fertilisation to natural death”.
The appeals court found that New York’s law “imposes severe burdens on Evergreen’s right to freedom of expressive association”, a right which enables “Evergreen to determine that its message will be effectively conveyed only by employees who sincerely share its views”.
Evergreen’s founder Christopher Slattery said he was “thrilled” at the court’s decision, calling it “a major victory for the pro-life world”.
BBC
Earlier this week, a BBC documentary branded a UK pro-life pregnancy centre ‘coercive’, ‘manipulative’ and ‘deceptive’, while refusing to provide any meaningful right of reply.
Tyneside Pregnancy Advice Centre (TPAC) in Newcastle upon Tyne, which has been running for 14 years, operates with a Christian ethos and offers women advice about their pregnancies while being clear it does not provide abortions. One of its advisors was secretly recorded as part of a Panorama investigation.
The BBC’s flagship investigative series allowed pro-abortion groups to critique the advice given in the covert footage and dismiss it without challenge, but edited out most of TPAC’s response. The clinic said the BBC’s “activist production team” had acted in “bad faith” in an attempt to discredit its work.
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