First Choice Women's Resource Center says Attorney General Matthew Platkin (D) selectively targeted its facilities in the state with a wide-ranging, unfounded, and burdensome subpoena that requires the organization to, because of it religious speech and pro-life views, expend its limited resources to produce extensive documentation or face judicial sanctions.
Gabriella McIntyre of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the law firm representing First Choice, says knowing most post-abortive women would have chosen life if they knew they had support, pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) like First Choice are there to help women when no one else is.
"ADF is coming alongside them and making sure that they can continue to serve their communities and engage in that constitutionally protected conduct without being harassed by the government," the attorney tells AFN.
The subpoena, she says, does not actually state any evidence of misleading statements or unethical behavior on part of First Choice, but the attorney general appears to be specifically targeting statements on abortion pill reversal.
"That seems to be the primary topic of the subpoena," McIntyre relays, "although it goes after a broad swath of information that would consume First Choice's resources away from its mission, which is to serve its community, and towards compliance with this subpoena."
In the lawsuit, ADF claims the attorney general's demands violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and are designed to leverage the threat of sanctions under New Jersey law to frustrate First Choice's pro-life ministry.
Meanwhile, this is a problem not just limited to First Choice Women's Resource Centers.
"It's a part of a pattern across the United States where attorneys general are using the power of the sword to go after and target and harass pro-life pregnancy centers because of their religious and pro-life views," McIntyre reports.
First Choice Women's Resource Centers v. Platkin will be heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in Trenton.
