Judge Strikes Down Law Requiring Doctors Promote Abortion

“I didn’t know, I didn’t know,” sobbed a mother, crying in anguish as she rocked back and forth, as only one who has carried the burden of regret for 20 years can.

A nurse at a prolife pregnancy center was conducting an ultrasound for that mother’s 18-year-old daughter, who was pregnant. The mother and her pregnant daughter told the nurse that they had already decided on an abortion, but came in for an ultrasound, just to know how far along she was.

Seeing the flickering black-and-white image, the pregnant daughter’s mother broke down. The small figure on the screen was nine weeks old — the same age as the child she had aborted 20 years earlier. Back then, she had believed it was just a clump of tissue. Now, witnessing for the first time what an unborn child at that gestational age looked like, she saw on that ultrasound a baby — her grandchild — and the weight of that realization crashed down on her.

The nurse paused the scan to console the daughter’s mother and tell her about the resources that her center offers for post-abortive parents. “The mother, at the end of that visit, she went up to her daughter and told her that she would help her, that they were going to keep the baby,” the nurse, Pasha Bohlen of Pregnancy Aid South Suburbs, testified during trial in Schroeder v. Treto, Jr.

That moment reaffirmed Bohlen’s belief, one that is shared by hundreds of pro-life doctors and pregnancy resource centers across Illinois, that abortion offers no medical benefits — only harm. Yet, for the better part of the last decade, the state of Illinois has battled in court to force pro-life doctors and pregnancy centers, like Bohlen’s, to share so-called “benefits of abortion” with the pregnant mothers in her care.

When Gov. Bruce Rauner signed SB 1564 into law in 2016, amending the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act (HCRCA), Illinois told pro-life doctors and pregnancy centers they must either speak the state’s abortion talking points and refer for abortion when requested, or else lose the liability shield that protects conscience rights in health care. The state law quickly came under legal challenge and a preliminary injunction, issued back in 2017, had paused its enforcement until a final judgement in the case was issued. Following a September 2023 bench trial before U.S. District Court Judge Iain D. Johnston, judgement was finally handed down on April 4.

Judge Johnston’s decision in Thomas More Society’s legal challenge to SB 1564, Schroeder v. Treto, Jr., struck down the state’s abortion promotion mandate as a violation of the First Amendment in a resounding victory for free speech. It makes clear that forcing pro-life ministries to voice ideological talking points they reject as false is not only unconscionable, but also unconstitutional. As Johnston wrote, “The First Amendment protects both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all.”

Government-compelled speech, like the discussion of supposed “benefits of abortion” the state had sought to require, runs roughshod over the constitutional rights we all hold dear.

However, Johnston’s decision was only a partial victory for pro-life doctors and pregnancy centers. While the abortion promotion mandate was struck down, the decision upheld the state’s abortion referral mandate as constitutional, allowing it to remain on the books. But this isn’t the end of the road.

This split decision tees up the continuation of this legal battle, which we are now taking to federal appeals court. Requiring pro-life doctors and pregnancy centers to refer for abortions, or give out information about abortion providers, drafts them into being unwilling accomplices to abortion — violating their conscience and contradicting the very foundation of their ministries.

“We cannot, in good conscience, recommend or refer for abortion,” says Judy Cocks, executive director at 1^st Way Life Center in Johnsburg and another plaintiff of ours in the Schroeder case, “That’s not who we are, and it hurts our hearts to even contemplate being mandated to do so.”

Illinois politicians tried to dim the light of conscience and clamp down on free speech, and they have again been corrected by the courts. But for pro-life ministries across the Land of Lincoln, a deep moral and constitutional tension persists. It may take another decade, but where conscience and state power collide, we believe conscience will have the final say.