Is there any low to which Planned Parenthood and its creepy abortion allies won't stoop to to shut down their pro-life competition?

Apparently not. The abortion crowd has cooked up a law to silence what are known as crisis pregnancy centers in Illinois, the pro-life centers whose staff give women in troubled pregnancies options for avoiding abortion and very often, actual support in carrying their pregnancies to term. 

According to the Associated Press:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Illinois crisis pregnancy centers, which often pop up near abortion facilities to offer information about alternatives, could face penalties if they disseminate misleading or untruthful information.

The move is another Democratic effort to insulate the state’s virtually unfettered access to abortion, even as neighboring states restrict it.

Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzke signed legislation Thursday to immediately apply the state’s consumer protection statute to the pregnancy centers, non-medical facilities that offer some services to pregnant women and girls, such as ultrasound. They often discourage abortion by using counseling, material support and/or housing in an effort to persuade women to bring their pregnancies to term.

It's strange to see this sort of crackdown, as if the competition of ideas were intolerable for the abortion promoters. It sounds as if the crisis pregnancies centers are cutting into their abortion business profitability. It's also quite heavyhanded, given that Illinois is one of the most pro-choice states in the union, yet somehow that isn't good enough for the abortion groups who can't seem live on merely that legislative advantage and still have a need to shut down other voices.

Which, as the crisis pregnancy centers say, does raise questions about whether we still have First Amendment protections. The pro-life crisis pregnancy centers have launched a lawsuit against the law, calling for a restraining order and injunction on it, as a a violation of their right to free speech. The state of Illinois, led by far-leftists, doesn't seem to recognize any right to free speech except their own, and of course, opposes the suit.

It raises the question: What the heck are they accused of doing that's deceptive? Figuring that out was actually difficult until I read this piece several times.

Here's the explanation of what their so-called "deception" is from a pro-abortion group:

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says crisis pregnancy centers “represent themselves as legitimate reproductive health care clinics providing care for pregnant people but actually aim to dissuade people from accessing certain types of reproductive health care, including abortion care and even contraceptive options.”

If you don't believe in abortion, because the practice amounts to murder, why should you be in the business of dishing out access to abortion as "legitimate reproductive health care" as such groups put it? Abortion is not "legitimate reproductive health care," to these groups, because like most of us, health care doesn't normally result in a burial. But apparently, they want these crisis pregnancy centers to hand out abortion access information, as if they were required to be the ad men and sales representatives for Planned Parenthood's abortion profit centers, done for free, without commissions.

They're also against crisis pregnancy centers trying to talk women out of having abortions if they've set some kind of appointment with the abortion mill.

Here is Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul explaining out how he sees this law:

“You’re not free to lie to people and to use deceptive practices and to sometimes take people away from where they were intending to go,” Raoul said. “There’s nothing in the First Amendment that protects that type of action.”

Apparently, if you've set that appointment at the abortion clinic, you are not allowed to change your mind and have that baby if you get help from a crisis pregnancy center instead. You absolutely have become the property of Planned Parenthood so into the charnel truck your baby will go.

In Raoul's mind, the mind-changing can only go one way. I am sure there are women who start out at crisis pregnancy centers but still decide to go forward with their abortions, but you can bet that is not going to result in $50,000 fines to Planned Parenthood from this leftist.

It's not as if these women are forced into crisis pregnancy centers against their will, as he implies.

If a woman wants to go to a crisis pregnancy center on the way to the abortion clinic and decides along the way to change her mind, that is her right because it's a free country and we do have a First Amendment that does allow people to gather the most information they can out there. But not to Raoul. Once you've made the Planned Parenthood appointment for the dead baby, you have to go through with it whether you like it or not.

It's insane, a true violation of the First Amendment for those whose speech the abortion lobby doesn't like. We all know that Planned Parenthood isn't giving out adoption information, so why should crisis pregnancy centers be required to give out abortion information? 

Why is a woman's choice in this matter any of his business? We thought they said they were pro-choice. Obviously, that's only if the choices chosen are their choices.

Raoul's got the power bug in this, because not only did he lobby for the bill, he got the bill to say that disinformation itself, shall be determined by him. That could be whether it's crisis pregnancy centers showing women ultrasounds of their babies, telling them about abortion regret and the potential need many post-abortion women have for therapy, or telling them about the risks of abortion, which is never 100% risk-free, or telling them where to get free diapers. They won't be allowed to do these things because he will say they are disinformation.

That sounds mighty convenient to be both the arbiter of what truth is as well as the prosecutor of groups he doesn't agree with. 

He's shilling for Planned Parenthood, a huge campaign donor to Democrats, and a group with a skeezy past, which includes coddling the likes of Harvey Weinstein, and getting caught cutting up aborted babies and selling them for parts, according to recent undercover video reports by pro-life activist groups. 

He's obviously got a conflict of interest here.

But instead of letting the free exchange of ideas flow, confident that patients will always choose abortion over life as he wants, he's now trying to censor free speech and the free flow of ideas, creating a chilling effect on it, and then shut down crisis pregnancy centers.

All I can think from reading this travesty of legislation is that these crisis pregnancy centers must be doing an impressive job changing minds of women in crisis pregnancies to have their babies if they would go to these ends to persecute them and make a mockery of the First Amendment for it.

Who's the one witholding and distorting information here? And how long before this garbage is tossed out in court for its obvious trampling on free speech rights? It can't happen soon enough,

Image: Screen shot from WGN News video, via YouTube