The mission for Live Action, the group states, is to shift culture and law on abortion through educational media, human interest storytelling, investigative reporting, and community activism, revealing the humanity of preborn children and exposing what it says is the abortion industry's exploitation of women and families for profit.
Amplify Legal, an abortion-related legal firm, sent a letter to Live Action saying the firm represents 13 women. Those women claim Live Action published false and defamatory statements about their abortions after the women had received diagnoses of serious or fatal fetal conditions.
“We write to demand that Live Action News and Ms. (Nancy) Flanders immediately cease and desist from publishing these false and defamatory statements about our clients and correct the libelous matter detailed below,” Amplify Legal wrote.
Through 19 pages and 7,300-plus words the entire matter turned on one single word, Peter Breen, of the pro-life law firm Thomas More Society, said on “Washington Watch” Tuesday.
That word is “kill.”
“It came down to this: They wanted Live Action to stop using the word 'kill' in connection with abortion,” Breen told show host Jody Hice.
“But what are you doing in an abortion? You are killing a living human being and again uncomfortable, but certainly true, and it’s well within the First Amendment rights of Live Action and any pro-life group to be able to use that word and say very clearly that abortion is killing,” Breen said.
In a statement, Live Action founder Lila Grace Rose vowed the legal threat "will not stop us from calling abortion what it is or from fighting for the right of every child to live."
Money trail leads back to Hopewell
There are twists and turns, but the money trail eventually leads to Soros, the leftist Hungarian-born philanthropist who has given away more than $32 billion to various projects.
Amplify Legal was specifically created as the legal arm of Abortion America, which is a project of the Hopewell Fund.
The Hopewell Fund is a nonprofit that exists to sponsor and support advocacy projects. It operates under Arabella Advisors, which is a for-profit consulting and administrative-services company which assists many left-leaning progressive nonprofit organizations.
The Ohio Senate in 2023 documented a $36-million 2021 contribution from Soros' Foundation to Promote Open Society to Arabella's New Venture Fund.
The First Amendment clearly states that Congress shall make no law, among other things, that abridges freedom of speech or freedom of the press.
Amplify Legal, in essence, is being accused of challenging the First Amendment. Lawsuits are planned in multiple states.
Breen says Amplify Legal is a “multi-hundred-million-dollar Soros-funded organization that is trying to scare a group like Live Action into silence. They’re trying to silence pro-life speech.”
The letter claims that Live Action made false and defamatory statements about Megan Kling, a Wisconsin woman, whose baby faced a lack of kidneys and other severe developmental issues while inside the womb.
It says that Live Action discounted certain facts, and in two articles intentionally presented Kling as “cruel and morally culpable. Worse, they made no effort to verify their twisted and false account of Ms. Kling’s lived experience.”
Winning a defamation lawsuit would require Amplify Legal to prove Live Action printed false statements and in doing so harmed Kling’s reputation.
For the defendant, proving the truth of the news coverage is an absolute defense.
“If Live Action is making true statements, which is abortion is killing, where is the actual harm?” Breen asked.
He said Live Action’s news coverage equated to “good, hard journalism instead of making false statements about people that would lower their standing in the community.”
