Crisis pregnancy center sues after state calls them misleading

An anti-abortion center is suing state officials and a nonprofit, claiming that Massachusetts’s “first in the nation” public awareness campaign against pregnancy crisis centers infringes on its constitutional rights.

Your Options Medical — a pregnancy resource center with locations in Brookline, Fall River, Hyannis, and Revere — claims the state is targeting their center and others in the state for their religious and political speech, violating the First and Fourteenth amendments.

Pregnancy resource centers, also known as crisis pregnancy centers or anti-abortion centers, typically provide services like pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, and counseling. The state, however, says the centers “masquerade” as comprehensive reproductive health providers by not offering abortions, abortion referrals, or contraception and are motivated by anti-abortion political views.

The state launched its public awareness campaign in collaboration with the nonprofit Reproductive Equity Now in June. On its website, the state claims the centers mislead pregnant people, delay care, deceptively advertise themselves, have untrained staff, and share medical disinformation. 

The campaign includes advertisements on social media, radio, and transit along with billboards, DPH announced at the time. It is funded by a $1 million investment by the state legislature. 

Your Options Medical filed the suit in federal court Monday against Governor Maura Healey, the state Department of Public Health commissioner Robert Goldstein, and Reproductive Equity Now and their executive director. They’re represented by Massachusetts Liberty Legal Center, launched by conservative Christian group Massachusetts Family Law. 

“Governor Healey and DPH need to be held accountable for using over a million dollars in state resources to defame, threaten, and intimidate pro-life pregnancy resource centers,” MLLC said in a statement. “We will not sit idly by as these charities are unconstitutionally targeted simply because of their moral and religious beliefs.”

Your Options Medical, a Christian organization founded in 1999, is licensed by DPH, according to the lawsuit. In January, the department said there are nearly 30 anti-abortion centers in the state, and only four are licensed to provide medical care. 

In the suit, Your Options Medical also said they were targeted for vandalism — notably the word “scam” spray painted on one building — after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.

“In response to these acts of vandalism, Massachusetts officials did not pursue a public awareness campaign to bring these vandals to justice,” the complaint said. “Instead, government officials took affirmative steps to contribute to, and escalate, the hostile rhetoric against pro-life organizations, such as YOM.” 

The lawsuit pointed to multiple communications from the state, Goldstein, and the nonprofit named in the suit, calling them “an overt viewpoint-based campaign of harassment, suppression, and threats against YOM and other PRCs” involving “selective law enforcement prosecution (and) public threats.”

Healey and Goldstein declined to comment, and Reproductive Equity Now did not return a request for comment.