CPCs may be organized as not-for-profit organizations, but they offer services to the public and they advertise those services to the public.

zuzu: i think we’re at an impasse on the larger issue, but as far as commercial speech goes what you described is a public accommodation, not commercial speech, which necessitates a proposed financial/economic transaction.

but that doesn’t mean you can’t restrict or force speech on these pregnancy centers, after all yelling fire in a crowded movie theatre is not commercial speech either, but you have to rest your argument on these centers creating an immediate and clear and present danger to the health the women, like yelling the proverbial “fire” would.

short of that, these centers have to be treated like those “curing homosexuality” centers: wrong, unscientific, lies, dangerous even…but ultimately something between 2 consenting adults who are free to stay or leave.

Why can’t they advertise truthfully? What are they hiding and what is their true agenda?

you’re unbelievable. I read the sentence incorrectly, then went to edit my post but couldn’t, as i mentioned in a subsequent post.

more importantly, in that very post I agreed with jill and yet you still have a need to make ad-hominem attacks??

your MO appears to be to personally attack someone even if they agree with you if the ever disagreed with you. pathetic.

No, not “them.” After serving subpoenas on 24 clinics statewide, then-AG Spitzer reached a voluntary settlment with exactly ONE upstate facility and withdrew the subpoenas as to the rest — with his own spokesperson conceding that pro-life counselors “do good work.” In 2006, an abortion clinic settled a similar suit for advertising under “abortion alternatives.”

Legislation has been pending in Congress to forbid CPCs from advertising under “abortion services.” The bill lost the backing of the ACLU, with a very pro-choice ACLU board member, Wendy Kaminer, saying:

I find it quite appalling that the ACLU is actively supporting this. I think this is precisely the kind of legislation we should be opposing, not supporting. I am troubled by the assumption in the legislation that abortion services, as a matter of linguistics and a matter of law, cannot include discussing with a woman why she shouldn’t have an abortion. I don’t believe the pro-choice movement has the copyright on the term ‘abortion services.’ That seems to me a very clear example of government being the language police.

People, male and female, young and old, generally trust doctors. And yes, they will trust people who look and speak like doctors in a place that looks and functions like a doctor’s office.

Disseminating false information under the guise of being a licensed medical professional is WRONG. It’s unethical whether you’re a fake-dermatologist or a fake-gynecologist or a fake-dentist. And in the case of crisis pregnancy centers specifically, it’s exploiting a situation to promote an agenda with no regard for the person who will have to live with the results.

If a CPC chooses not to provide abortions or think abortions should be illegal, fine. The problem is that it presents its agenda as medical fact and guilt-trips a woman into birthing a child that she does not want and cannot afford and possibly is not healthy enough to carry.

This isn’t about forcing speech on individuals in their private lives. It’s about forcing a certain type of organization that routinely decieves people to make it clear to their clients that they are not medical professionals or bound by law to tell the truth.

the real agenda. certainly not pro-choice.

By all means, let’s enable fraud.

Manju, you’re just determined to excuse these centers from having to tell the truth, aren’t you?

you’re getting closer to a resonable person standard if they are posing as a “health clinic” but the one we’re discussing does not use those words, as far as i know.

And yet they offer bogus pregnancy tests and ultrasounds.

if this is a non-profit i don’t think it’ll fall under commercial speech standards.

Planned Parenthood is a not-for-profit organization as well, yet they’re required by various local governments to recite medically inaccurate anti-choice propaganda when someone comes in asking for an abortion.

CPCs may be organized as not-for-profit organizations, but they offer services to the public and they advertise those services to the public. A number of years ago, the AG in New York prevented them from advertising their services under “abortion” in the phone book because they were deliberately trying to defraud people who were seeking an abortion — by advertising under “abortion,” they were deliberately creating the false impression that they offered the services that someone who was looking for an abortion was seeking, only to pressure them, once there, not to get an abortion — or to string them along for so long that they could no longer obtain a reasonably-priced, safe abortion.

There’s a term for that. It’s called “bait and switch.”

As for your government-funds argument, a lot of these centers *do* receive government funding. Yet they’re still allowed to defraud the public.

the police and courts would have shut them down long ago

the real agenda. certainly not pro-choice.

Free speech does not cover putting people at risk.

true. fire in a movie theatre. but you can’t just assume people are at risk b/c you don’t approve of the speech, you have to demonstrate it either by real harm or a “resonable person” standard like any resonable person would run out of a theare if someone yelled fire.

Just like you can’t use the word “organic” on food or clothing without meeting some standards, you shouldn’t be able to slap “health clinic” on something without proving you actually have doctors and equipment there.

you’re getting closer to a resonable person standard if they are posing as a “health clinic” but the one we’re discussing does not use those words, as far as i know. we have to assume women are intelligent enough to discern theses CPCs from doctors offices or emergency rooms. its very dangerous to infanatlize women, especially where the law is concerned.