Nifla V. Becerra

Floor Speech

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, next Tuesday, March 20, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for the case NIFLA v. Becerra. At issue is a California law that requires medically licensed pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise for and to promote the abortion industry by posting notices alerting clients that the State of California provides free or low-cost abortions.

This law blatantly violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The government may never compel anyone, including pregnancy centers, to make statements with which they disagree. This is clearly and blatantly unconstitutional, and courts across the Nation agree.

When abortionists sought to compel the speech of pregnancy centers in other jurisdictions, their laws were not allowed to stand. In fact, in 2009, in my home State of Maryland, a Baltimore city ordinance required pregnancy centers to post signs in their waiting rooms stating that they do not refer for abortions. This January, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that this law is unconstitutional. Judge Wilkinson said that the ordinance compels ``a politically and religiously motivated group to convey a message fundamentally at odds with its core belief and its mission.''

Similar laws have been tried in Austin, Texas; Montgomery County, Maryland; and New York City. These laws, too, have been partially or fully invalidated. Even the California law in question has already been found to violate freedom of speech.

While the Federal case was advancing to the Supreme Court, a parallel track was being pursued at the State level. In October of last year, Judge Gloria Trask found that the law violated article I, section 2 of the California Constitution. In fact, she granted an injunction that prevents California from enforcing the law. She said the ``speech required by the FACT Act is unquestionably compelled and content based.'' It forces the clinic to point the way to the abortion clinic and can leave patients with the belief that they were referred to an abortion clinic provider by that pro-life pregnancy center.

Now, instead of seeking to silence pro-life pregnancy centers, people in every community should celebrate and support their work. They provide vital free or low-cost care to vulnerable women and children. So today we are here to talk about how pro-life pregnancy centers help mothers in our communities, giving them real choice.

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for his comments.

Mr. Speaker, we need to remind people that these pro-life pregnancy centers are private entities. They run on private donations. They provide services at no charge to these mothers. In some pregnancy centers--a lot of them, for instance--they will have a room that is just full of supplies, supplies to help a mother, to help a mother in a crisis pregnancy get through the pregnancy, take care of that child, and to give that child the very precious gift of life.

Mr. Speaker, I would next yield to the gentleman from Michigan for comments he might make on the importance of pregnancy centers. While he is getting to the microphone, let me just tell you a story that one of the pregnancy crisis centers told me. Again, these are centers that frequently now provide ultrasound exams.

And they tell me the story of a woman who called the helpline seeking an abortion, actually. She called the pregnancy center helpline. She knew very little about the emotional, physical, or spiritual repercussions of the choice she was considering. She felt alone, told by her boyfriend to ``get rid of it'' or he was gone.

But the pregnancy center gave her a choice. They scheduled an appointment. She came for the appointment. And after seeing her 9-week- old baby's heartbeat and it move about playfully in her womb, she decided to give this child the gift of life.

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for his comments. He brings up a good point. These pregnancy centers don't only help mothers and give them choices; they actually help the fathers as well. A lot of times these fathers just don't know what fatherhood will be like, and they mentor these fathers and, again, begin to give that couple the ability to create a loving household for that child.

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for those words in support of these pro-life pregnancy centers. Tonight we are going to hear, during this hour, from some of the real leaders of the pro-life movement; but, in this case, we should really call this the pro-choice movement because that is what these pregnancy centers actually do: they give women a real choice.

A lot of women who come to these pregnancy centers, of course, are pressured or expect that they can't bring these pregnancies to fulfillment, to the birth of a new life. And these pregnancy centers give them the choice to do that. They provide the resources, the support, the mentoring, the prayers that these difficult pregnancies need.

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa for those touching comments. Again, this is about giving mothers choices.

You know, one has to ask the question: Why in the world don't abortion clinics show ultrasounds? What are they afraid of? Are they afraid of giving a woman a real choice, of actually seeing that baby, of denying the fact that it is not a blob of tissue, it is actually a baby with a heartbeat?

It is a baby that moves. It is your child. But they don't get that choice in an abortion clinic. They get it at a crisis pregnancy center.

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for those comments. He is absolutely right. No matter where you stand on the issue of abortion, you should stand with the First Amendment on the right of an individual not to have their speech compelled by the government; and that is what at stake in this court case.

I want to just thank God that we have a President who understands the importance of these constitutional bases, and one who, I believe, will nominate Justices to the Supreme Court who will continue to uphold the First Amendment and the other amendments to the Constitution.

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler) for her comments.

Just to remind people, you know, there are things you find in a crisis pregnancy center you just don't find in your local Planned Parenthood. Almost all of them will have a room where donated clothing--clothing that, you know, most of it used. Yeah, that is the way it is. People who have had children, their children are grown. They will donate their clothing to a pregnancy center to help those mothers who need help, mothers who perhaps feel they can't financially afford to have a child because they have to buy clothing for a child, they have to buy diapers. These pregnancy centers give them a real choice.

Foxx), another pro-life leader in the House of Representatives.

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for comments.

Again, just reminding, as the gentlewoman said, these are centers that provide true resources to women at a time when they are very, very vulnerable. I can't imagine why a city council or a State legislature, or any jurisdiction, or any legislature would want to--what amounts to--close these centers down, because these are people who believe abortion is wrong.

They are not going to refer people for abortions. That is the bottom line. They will close their doors before they will send someone to something that they think is morally reprehensible, and the last thing the State should do is compel them to ever do that. Why we would want to close these centers down that are so vital to our communities is a puzzle to me.

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Washington for those comments. He points out that each of our districts have numerous pregnancy centers, usually. In fact, crisis pregnancy centers outnumber abortion clinics three to one. These are valuable resources in anyone's district, in any town, any county.

What is at issue here is, if you had a nonprofit running a recreation center in your neighborhood and it provided resources to troubled teenagers after school, this would be like the State telling that recreation center, ``Do you know what? You have got to promote a certain religion in your recreation center,'' or, ``Do you know what? You have got to put out certain political pamphlets of one political party on your desk when people come in the door.'' We would be incensed with that. This is exactly what California is attempting to do with this law to these pro-life crisis pregnancy centers.

With that, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Williams) for his comments.

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas and, again, remind everyone that these are such valuable resources in their towns and their neighborhoods.

I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson).

One thing about Congress is we have people with all different areas of expertise, but on this particular issue, the gentleman from Louisiana brings particular expertise because of his background as a lawyer and one who has defended religious liberty in courtrooms here in the United States, protecting that very important right given to us in the First Amendment that is at issue, at issue in this California case.

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana not only for those excellent remarks, but for bringing this kind of expertise to the House of Representatives.

Now I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

Mr. Smith is a leader in protecting human rights around the world, from the U.S. House of Representatives, a leader in protecting life and, in this case, giving his remarks about how important pro-life pregnancy centers are to our Nation and our communities and how damaging this law would be.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank Dr. Harris for his leadership for many, many years. He is an extraordinary physician-- Johns Hopkins and so many other places where he has been an anesthesiologist, and we are so grateful for the expertise and precision that he brings. Doctors can focus in a way that makes it so clear and so nonambiguous.

In defense of life, never has that message been more important than now because there is so much fuzziness, so much distortion, and it is about time clarity breaks out when it comes to the abortion issue. We have never had that national debate.

In a way, we have had it in a minor way, in a micro way. Every time a woman goes in and has an ultrasound, she walks away seeing her baby still in utero. The first baby pictures today, as we all know, are not newborns. On the refrigerators all across America, the first baby pictures happen to be unborn babies, and we all are thrilled when we see our children and grandchildren up on the refrigerator as an unborn baby. That is the first thing they see as they begin to comprehend what they are looking at: ``That is me while I was still in Mommy.''

As Dr. Harris pointed out in his opening, the Supreme Court does take up this case next week, NIFLA v. Becerra, the California law that requires medically licensed pregnancy centers to advertise for the abortion industry by putting up notices. Telling clients where to get free and low-cost abortions is an egregious--an egregious--violation of the First Amendment Free Speech Clause.

The government should not compel, should not coerce an organization or organizations and the people behind them to facilitate the dismemberment and chemical poisoning of unborn children, which is exactly what abortion is. The sophistry of choice cloaks the deed, and the deed is all about taking that child apart through dismemberment or through a chemical poison.

Dr. Harris spoke earlier about ultrasounds. We know that when abortion is done, many types of abortions, they use an ultrasound. Ultrasound-guided abortions make it easier for them to dismember the child. And it was Abby Johnson who ran a clinic, was director of a clinic in Texas for about 8 years, a Planned Parenthood clinic, who quit when she finally saw on that screen an ultrasound- guided abortion and was repelled and repulsed by how that child was being killed by a so-called physician. She was repulsed. She became a very strong pro-lifer since then.

Let me say one thing about pregnancy care centers. There are about 2,752 in the country, according to Heartbeat International, and the numbers are growing. There are many in my district, like Dr. Harris said are in his as well.

A few years ago, my wife and I went to a pregnancy care banquet in Middlesex County, New Jersey. Two women got up and spoke so eloquently and with tears in their eyes about how they were scheduled and actually en route to the abortion at the clinic, and there were these compassionate women, selfless women who said: Please reconsider. Please take a look at the alternatives. We will help you.

Both of those women turned around, two different times, and went back and had their babies.

With tears in their eyes, two young girls got up a little later, and at first we thought they were just going to talk about how committed they were to life. They talked about school and sports and boys, but at the end of their talk, they looked at the director of the pregnancy care center and her volunteers and thanked them for being there outside that abortion clinic that day, the day that their moms were scheduled to abort them.

Mr. Speaker, in an amicus brief submitted by a head of the NIFLA v. Becerra oral arguments, 13 women told their stories of the care and the hope that they received from pregnancy care centers, and here, briefly, is Angela's story.

Angela grew up in a very difficult household and turned to drugs when she was 14 years old. Angela continued to wrestle with addiction and, at 31, discovered she was pregnant. Although she made an appointment for an abortion, she decided to keep the baby.

Because of her addiction and the circumstance of her pregnancy, she felt she could not turn to her family for support, so she found a pregnancy care center. This one was in New York.

At her first appointment, staff showed Angela her baby through an ultrasound.

Mr. Speaker, let me remind you that Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the cofounder of NARAL, who said, ``I have come to the agonizing conclusion that I presided over 60,000 deaths,'' was one of leaders in the sixties and seventies in promoting abortion throughout this country, and was very effective at it. When he became pro-life, he said:

If wombs had windows, if every woman prior to an abortion would see an ultrasound of her baby, she would run out of that clinic.

Well, the pregnancy care center people in New York showed Angela the ultrasound, and she was enamored, touched deeply by the baby--her baby--that she saw on the screen.

They met with her weekly as the pregnancy progressed, always staying by her side, and a staff member was with her in the hospital when she delivered.

After Angela gave birth to her son, Cameryn, the staff helped her to enroll in WIC and to reach out to New York's Department of Social Services.

She continued to come to the pregnancy center--this is all in the friend-of-the-court brief--for parenting courses and for support in staying clean of those drugs that had so hurt her life.

She writes:

I always thought that people were fake, but they are genuine, particularly at the center. This is who they really are. They will help me. And they are helping to raise my son.

Looking forward to life now, she credits the center with giving her support so that she doesn't turn back to drugs.

Women and children across our Nation share similar stories. I have heard many, many of those stories over my time in the pro-life movement. And every time you meet one of those women--because we argue, Dr. Harris and I and all of those in the pro-life movement, that there are two victims in every abortion. The obvious is the dead child, who is dismembered or chemically poisoned; and the mother.

And pregnancy care centers are all about life affirmation, loving them both. And to be told by California, ``You must advertise how to kill that baby,'' when you are about loving them both, like I said at the beginning, is an egregious violation of the First Amendment. And I do believe, and I know Dr. Harris and others on our side of this issue believe, that the Supreme Court will see that as such and render that law moot.

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey very much for his comments.

It is a shame that here in the United States, with the freedoms that we have guaranteed in our Constitution, that this even has to come before a court. It is so clear that it is unconstitutional to compel speech against someone's beliefs--political, religious beliefs. These are what our Nation is founded on, and to compel these clinics to do this is something that shouldn't even enter the thoughts of anyone.

Again, we would never compel any other nonprofit existing on donations and the neighborhood providing things to people in those neighborhoods and communities. We wouldn't think of compelling, again, political speech. We wouldn't think of compelling religious activity.

Yet, here, California attempts to compel these volunteers, these clinics, who work on providing such a valuable choice to the women in their community, to essentially refer for an abortion that is against all the deeply held beliefs of these individuals.

Mr. Speaker, I want to read the stories of some of the women who go to these clinics, because this really is about choice. This is about institutions in a community that offer true choice. Now, these are stories from the pregnancy centers in my community.

So let me first tell you about Miranda. Mr. Speaker, 19-year-old Miranda came to this pregnancy center with her boyfriend and learned she was 9 weeks pregnant. Miranda worked 9 hours a day as a cashier at a Home Depot. She, honestly, was not happy with the positive results of her test. She didn't think she could raise a baby, and nobody had any faith in her.

You see, a year earlier, Miranda had had an abortion. She still cries at the recollection and feels the pain of what she had done. She didn't want to make that choice again, but her circumstances hadn't changed, and she felt that that is what she had to do.

Now, the volunteer counselor praised Miranda for working full time and getting her GED. The volunteer counselor explained how Miranda could obtain healthcare, and how that clinic's Earn While You Learn Program would educate her on prenatal care and parenting, as well as provide her with much-needed baby supplies once the baby was born.

Then Miranda saw the fetal models depicting a 9-week-old fetus. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. She asked so many questions, like: When does the heart start beating? Would it be possible for her to hear the beating heart? When does the baby start kicking?

You see, Miranda explained that the abortion clinic she had been to a year before never told her about the development of the baby. She had been 15 weeks pregnant at the time she aborted.

It was so surprising for her to see the truth in those baby models. Nobody ever told her that her baby had been so fully developed. Miranda said that the best part about coming to the pregnancy center was that they ``told her she could do it.'' You see, she had never heard that before. Nobody had ever told her that. She had a real choice now.

Here is a story about Laura. When Laura came to the center 2 years ago, she was feeling nauseated and miserable. The timing of her pregnancy couldn't be worse. She had recently discovered that her mother had been diagnosed with late stage liver disease.

Laura, too, was post-abortive. Her previous abortion was a terrible experience that left her emotionally scarred, of course, as it leaves many women.

She didn't want to have another abortion, but felt she had no choice. She wanted to be there for her mom during her mother's time of need.

Now, the volunteer advocate in the clinic spent lots of time just listening to Laura. It became clear that Laura really wanted to keep her baby but was lost in trying to figure out how.

Mr. Speaker, this is a recurring story in these pregnancy centers. There is a reason why they used to be called crisis pregnancy centers. These are women frequently in crisis who want to have that choice but don't see the way out of their circumstances.

Well, this counselor helped Laura navigate through the muddy waters of her life and envision a future with her child.

Soon, Laura's fear began to subside. A sonogram revealed a 7-week-old baby. In a tearful voice, Laura said: ``That is my baby.''

Since then, Laura has returned to the center weekly, participating in their prenatal education classes. She actually moved in with her mother so she could help her through her illness. Laura's hope is that her mom will be strong enough to hold the baby and spend her last days on Earth with her grandchild.

Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of hope that pregnancy centers give women and their families. And, often, two lives are saved in these pregnancy centers: the child's and the mother's.

An unplanned pregnancy can provide an opportunity and inspiration for a woman to get her life back on track; in these two cases, to actually start the family. A pregnancy can give a woman a reason to live, to take care of that child; a reason to go back to school to finish her education, as we heard about Miranda; a reason to reconcile with her family.

As a father of five, and everyone who has been a parent knows this: we know how parenthood truly fundamentally transforms a person well before the child is born.

From the time you know that you are going to have a new baby in the family, as well as every moment afterward, life is precious, life is priceless. Pregnancy centers support women during every step of that journey of providing a new life, a gift from God.

Mr. Speaker, next week, the Court will hear a case that perhaps threatens the very existence of crisis pregnancy centers and pro-life pregnancy centers in the United States. I hope that those nine Justices have the wisdom to see that, in America, that a jurisdiction--whether it is California or Baltimore, Montgomery County, or Austin, Texas, or any jurisdiction--that has tried to compel speech in these pregnancy centers is violating our constitutional rights and, worse than that, is really affecting valuable resources in our community, the most valuable resource a woman with a crisis pregnancy can have.

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