by Mark Schwendau
Just when you thought Illinois Democrats had exhausted all their un-American ideas, like banning some forms of private firearm ownership for self-defense, cashless bail for criminals, and (most recently) allowing illegal aliens to serve as law enforcement officers, they top themselves. This one will garner national attention, condemnation, and ridicule for their lack of morality and oath to the Constitutions of the state and nation.
Illinois Democrats recently passed a bill to remove the First Amendment right of crisis pregnancy centers. Of course, Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker signed it into law. The law, SB 1909, was challenged immediately by the Thomas More Society.
August 3rd Federal District Court Judge Iain D. Johnston temporarily blocked implementation of the law in a scathing rebuke of SB 1909, the embarrassing work of defendant Kwame Raoul, Illinois’ inept political operative, attorney general, and co-drafter of the law.
The judge wrote:
“SB 1909 is both stupid and very likely unconstitutional. It is stupid because its own supporter admitted it was unneeded and was unsupported by evidence when challenged. It is likely unconstitutional because it is a blatant example of government taking the side of whose speech is sanctionable and whose speech is immunized—on the very same subject, no less. SB 1909 is likely classic content and viewpoint discrimination prohibited by the First Amendment.”
A more unambiguous chilling and self-censorship of protected speech there cannot be. While it targets those offering a better alternative to abortion, it exempts abortion providers. Those found violating the law could be fined up to $50,000.
Critically, SB 1909 specifically excludes Planned Parenthood from the various kinds of speech restrictions that would apply to crisis pregnancy centers offering alternatives to abortion.
Judge Johnston pointed out that the Consumer Fraud Act provides a sufficient and preferable legal mechanism for remedying deception:
“Defendant Raoul’s own Deputy Attorney General publicly stated that the Consumer Fraud Act—without SB 1909’s explicit inclusion of Centers and sidewalk counselors and explicit exclusion of abortion providers—would address the alleged concerns. And it would do so without blatant content and viewpoint discrimination.”
Judge Johnston offered examples of the differential treatment of crisis pregnancy centers and human termination facilities that would result from SB 1909. The new Senate Bill would grant enormous discretionary power to the attorney general, an integral part of the systemically biased leftist Democrat’s political machine that has been ending the lives of Illinois and unborn babies for years.
From the law:
“Allows the Attorney General to enforce the Act when: it appears to the Attorney General that a limited services pregnancy center has engaged in, is engaging in, or is about to engage in any practice declared to be unlawful by the Act … or the Attorney General believes it to be in the public interest that an investigation should be made to ascertain whether a limited services pregnancy center has engaged in, is engaging in, or is about to engage in, any practice declared to be unlawful by the Act.”
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law school professor and graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, warns about the encroaching First Amendment threats of which SB 1909 entails:
“When the Framers drafted the First Amendment, they did so in absolutist terms to allow no abridgment of the freedom of expression. The language was unprecedented and unqualified. While the courts have read various exceptions into that language, it was a recognition that censorship and speech criminalization have always been an impulse of those in power. Moreover, it can create an insatiable appetite where limiting speech in one area leads to demands in other areas. Democratic leaders have shown that tendency in recent years with an expanding anti-free speech agenda, but no one more embodies this danger than Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.”
Turley emphasized SB 1909 and Gov. Pritzker both jeopardize the very foundation of America in the First Amendment:
Gov. Pritzker declared the law is “just like the case against President Trump. You have a right to free speech, but you don’t have a right to lie.”
If he really believes that is the case, why isn’t Joe Biden in prison for life? He has been a D.C. career liar for 50 years now.
Of course, Pritzker, himself, is just another Democrat liar. He had to know lies are generally protected under the Constitution. In 2012, in the case of the United States v. Alvarez decision, the Supreme Court held 6-3 it is unconstitutional to criminalize lies. That historic case involved a politician who lied about military decorations (a matter of stolen valor).
Copyright © 2023 by Mark S. Schwendau
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Mark S. Schwendau is a retired technology professor who has always had a sideline in news-editorial writing where his byline has been, “Bringing little known news to people who simply want to know the truth.” He is a Christian conservative who God cast to be a realist. His website is www.IDrawIWrite.Tech.
there is ZERO – none NOT ONE Constitutional right to an abortion
it’s a medical procedure they didn’t have back in 1776 and they didn’t foresee it.
Nor is speech and abortion interchangable (like stupid and democrat reporter)
The premise is a lie therefore as there is no right to abortion
and there are laws limiting abortion – one must wonder why democrats insist on lying again and again about these things as if facts will change
Hopeless State! These are not Democrats they are Communist!
Might explain why a tub of Lard like Pritzker isn’t embarrassed to be seen in daylight.