The Daily Signal - Abortion Activists Turn to Legislation to Target Pregnancy Care Centers

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

INTERVIEW: Pro-abortion forces have moved from physically attacking pro-life pregnancy care centers to weaponizing legislation against them, according to the Rev. Jim Harden.  In recent months, “we started to see an ebb in the violent attacks against pro-life entities and a rise in potential weaponization of legislation specifically targeting pro-life activity in the public square, and specifically even more so pregnancy center activity,” says Harden, CEO of the pro-life New York-based organization CompassCare. In Illinois for example, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a bill "specifically giving the attorney general in Illinois the … unfettered ability to define what 'deceptive practices' means and what 'misinformation' means when it comes to the activities and speech of pro-life pregnancy centers,” Harden says. Violating the law “comes with $50,000 fines for each occurrence [of spreading misinformation] as they define it,” Harden said.  Harden joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain the ways in which pro-abortion activists are using legislation to target pro-life centers, and to offer advice to these pro-life organizations as to what they can do to protect themselves so they can continue serving the women and babies who need them.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today is Monday, August 7th, and this is the Daily Skill podcast. I'm Virginia Allen. Pro-abortion forces have moved from physically targeting pro-life centers to weaponizing legislation against them. Compass Care CEO and pro-life strategist Reverend Jim Hardin joins us on the show today to explain why the pro-abortion movement is now turning to legislation to stop the work of pro-life centers. and what the pro-life movement is doing to fight back. Stay tuned for our conversation, but first, I want to tell you all about another great podcast right here from the Heritage Foundation and The Daily Signal. As conservative women, you know, you may have heard the term that were problematic women. And it's true because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left.

Every Thursday morning on the Problematic Women podcast, Chris and I, Cammer, Lauren Evans and me, Virginia Allen, are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and the news that you care about, whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture or what Congress is up to, problematic women has you covered. We sort through the news to keep you up to date on the issues that are of particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women. You can find problematic women wherever you listen to podcasts and be to follow the show on Instagram. Now, here's my conversation with Reverend Jim Harden. It is my pleasure today to welcome back to the show, Compass Care, CEO, and Pro-Life Strategist,

Reverend Jim Harden. Reverend Hardin, thanks for being back with us today. Thanks for having me back. It's always an honor. Well, Compass Care is a pro-life pregnancy center in New York, and Reverend Hardin, we last had you on the show back in March after the center was attacked for a second time. Last year, The center was fire bombed, and then earlier this year, someone defaced your sign with red paint. Talk us through a little bit of what has happened since then. Has there been any accountability for the individuals who carried out those attacks against you? Did police or law enforcement ever find out who attacked you?

Well, with respect to the firebombing, which, you know, represented half a million dollars of damage and injuring two firefighters, no progress has been made on the side of the FBI or certainly not the DOJ. And we had to hire our own private investigator who has a team currently still working that case and is pursuing several promising leads right now. So we had to obviously pursue our own justice there. We're hoping to get a breakthrough shortly. The second attack, which, by the way, both attacks, we reached out to the the FBI because we were concerned about certain threats that were looming, and we were concerned

specifically about a fire bombing. We got fire bombed after we notified the FBI that we were concerned about a fire bombing two weeks prior. We did the same thing with respect to the second kind of attack, which was a graffiti of our sign, which, you know, in red paint saying liars, we notified the FBI about our concerns on the lead-up to the oral arguments for the case that might over the return or overthrow FDA's approval of the dangerous chemical abortion drug. That happened on March 15th. We notified the FBI before that. We were again attacked on that evening, early in the morning, March 16th. We did find our video surveillance was very effective at that time in identifying the perpetrator. She was arrested and charged and pled guilty to a felony misdemeanor. And that's in court.

right now, the Erie County District Attorney is prosecuting, but the FBI and DOJ refused to prosecute on FACE Act violations. Christopher Ray, Director of the FBI, said that they would, they prosecute fairly and equitably, whether it's an attack on an abortion clinic or a pregnancy center, pro-life pregnancy center. Merrick Garlands, under oath, said the same thing that they would prosecute whenever they caught anybody. They have so far refused. I said that they were lying, and of course, they are demonstrating that they were just pointing forward a good foot to show that they shouldn't be impeached as Marjorie Taylor Green thinks they should for their abdication of duty and looking into violent attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers.

So that's where we are right now. We'll have more to come probably at the end of the week on more legal action against the criminals. Okay, wow. So just a quick reminder for our listeners, the FACE Act stands for freedom of access to clinic Entrances Act, and this is specifically in place in order to protect those organizations that serve women and provide care to pregnant women. So while, yes, this applies to your Planned Parenthoods, it applies just as much to pro-life pregnancy centers.

So that's very fascinating to me that your center that provides services to pregnant women was specifically targeted for doing so. yet the government is refusing to use the FACE Act in this case. That's right. In fact, the FACE Act has been used almost solely since its inception in the Clinton administration in 1990s to indict peaceful pro-life people out in front of abortion clinics to cool and quell pro-life speech. And just last year alone, there have been over 300 attacks on peaceful pro-life entities, including churches and pregnancy centers. and I believe for the first time in the history of the FACE Act, under severe pressure from the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, the DOJ finally indicted jeans revenge graffiti artists down in Florida. First time, a FACE Act violation was brought against a pro-abortion extremist that we're aware of. So no convictions, though.

No convictions anywhere in the country as of yet. Wow. We're waiting for that and we'll be watching for that. Now, I want to get into a little bit about you say this. shift that it's happening. What we're seeing is that pro-abortion forces have moved from physically attacking pro-life centers to weaponizing legislation against the kind of care that you all provide. So can you just explain what is happening first, specifically in the state of Illinois regarding the law that Governor J.B. Pritzker recently signed that you say could threaten pro-life centers.

Yeah, so I said a couple months ago that we started to see an ebb in the violent attacks against pro-life entities and arise in potential weaponization of legislation, specifically targeting pro-life activity in the public square, and specifically even more so, pregnancy center activity. They're using the same language as Jane's revenge. This is a pro-abortion domestic terrorist front group for Antifa that radicalizes and recruits pro-abortion people for their cause. And, you know, so they're insisting that we're, you know, pregnancy centers are engaging in misinformation in both marketing as well as services. They're saying that we're harming women by, you know, not providing her with accurate information or intentionally misleading. leading her regarding the risks and side effects of abortion in particular. And the Illinois governor, Prisker, as you said, essentially signed this bill, specifically giving the attorney general in Illinois the essentially unfettered ability to define what deceptive practices

means and what misinformation means when it comes to the activities and speech of pro-life pregnancy centers, which comes with $50,000 fines for each occurrence as they define it. And, and And this could severely harm a pregnancy center and basically put them out of business. And that's what they really want to do. Their goal, Jane's Revenge, in their first communique after the first firebombing at the Pro Life Organization in Madison, Wisconsin on May 8th, 2022, said essentially their goal is to shut down pregnancy centers. They issued a 30-day ultimatum for pregnancy centers to shut down or face similar fates.

And that's what, you know, Elizabeth Warren said she wanted to do. and she wants to shut down pregnancy centers all across the country because she said we're harming them, terrorizing women? I mean, who's terrorizing women here? Who's harming women? New York State did the same thing. Six days after we were firebombed Kathy Hockel, Governor Kathy Hockel signed a bill to investigate the quote, fraudulent practices of pregnancy centers. The Biden administration, Joe Biden himself, signed an executive order on July 8th, 2020 for the DOJ to create a reproductive health task force to look into what they called, quote, the fraudulent practices of pregnancy centers. And then, of course, whistleblowers came out of the FBI saying that it created a new threat tag for people that adhere to pro-life

beliefs and specifically look into, quote, pregnancy centers. Okay. So there's a movement out there to weaponize not just legislation, but also the DOJ and the FBI and the resources thereof to specifically push pregnancy centers, vilify them and push them out of the public square as if they're doing the wrong thing. We're not doing the wrong thing. The reason why New York State and New York Governor Hockel did not act on the law that she signed to investigate printing centers is because I believe she's afraid of the public debate. There's an expose that came out by Ben Johnson at the Washington Stand, which you probably are aware of, highlighting the serial malpractice of the abortion industry in New York State. But New York State is not an anomaly. New York State is the rule. As goes abortion in New York, so goes abortion in the rest of the country. The abortion industry is committing serial malpractice and fraud.

They're saying that chemical abortion, 500% more dangerous than surgical, one in 20 women ending up in the emergency room, they're saying this dangerous chemical abortion drug is safer than Tylenol. We're the only ones. Pregnese centers are the only ones providing women with true informed consent. So they're attacking the politically disfavored, targeting, singling out pregnancy centers, because by the pro-abortion politically elite, using language of James' revenge, specifically to protect the abortion industry. And I believe the next step is not just weaponization of, you know, legislation, but actual litigation.

So thankfully, the Thomas More Society out in Illinois in Chicago, you know, filed a preliminary injunction on this law to protect the absolutely essential life-saving activity of pregnancy centers from these pro-abortion political elites. There's such a critical pushback that is happening. Like you said, so the Thomas More Society on behalf of pro-life pregnancy centers, they've filed for a preliminary injunction against the law in Illinois. Explain what exactly this lawsuit is asking and seeking. Well, essentially, this lawsuit is seeking to vacate the law that was just signed by the governor as a, you know, a violation of the First Amendment rights of pro-life people, violation of freedom of speech in particular, as all, as well. as the violation of the 14th Amendment rights of equal protection under the law and due process. You know, this is unfair targeting. This is like Stalinistic, you know, Article 58 type stuff, you know, where you got these political elites that have control over the legislature and the executive

branch just totally undermining the rule of law by using the legal system. It is unjust. The law itself is unjust. And everybody, whether they're pro-life or not, ought to be very concerned about the precedent that this sets for government to rest control and limit and abridge the rights of disfavored, politically disfavored people. They're saying that pro-life people can't speak the truth about the dangers of abortion and they have to, they're forcing pro-life people to say that childbearing, having a child is 14 times more deadly than abortion. When in fact, the peer-reviewed medical journal studies across the globe say that there's a 44% increased risk of breast cancer. cancer with abortion, a 52% increase in preterm deliveries, an 80% increased risk of a negative

mental health diagnosis. And by the way, these are studies that are all across the globe, and there's meta-analysis that goes with it that demonstrate a dose effect, which means that the more abortions you have, the higher your risk is for breast cancer, pre-term delivery, etc. So they don't want the world to know the fraud that is abortion. Abortion itself is not medicine. The original Hippocratic oath, the oath that doctors would take before they start practicing medicine independently, had this phrase in it. It says, I will not give a woman an abortive remedy. Out of all the things that they could have put in the Hippocratic Oath, why did they choose abortion? And I think it's because the purpose of medicine is to heal and to maintain the health of the patient.

And abortion does neither one of those two things for either the woman or the baby. So abortion represents the original quackery, a total violation of Western medical ethics. Why do you think that there have been such targeted attacks on pro-life centers? Of course, first, what we saw with physical attacks against these centers, and now we're seeing legislation attacking these pro-life centers. Why? I believe that pregnancy centers are being attacked because of what we believe. What we believe is that all people are made in the image of God and therefore equally valuable deserving of blessing and protection without. partiality, without qualification. And that belief is the belief that stands between tyranny

and a constitutional rule of law. We are endowed by our creator, not by our government, with certain inalienable rights. And so when the government decides to come along and fabricate rights, those will ultimately be on a collision course, as Samuel Alito said in the Dobbs case, with the inalienable ones. So if you create a right to abortion, there's going to, it's it's going to collide with the right to life at some point in time in the future. And so what that does is it undermines the rule of law and paves the way for a tyrannical regime to determine the rights and control the rights, so to speak, of the population. And Antifa, according to their own goals, has said that they want to destroy the nation-state system that basically is represented

by the bulwark that is America, constitutional rule of law, in order to pave the way for a global communism. And you see Antifa at work all over the globe. It's specifically through these left-wing kind of extremist groups, transgender groups, the pro-abortion groups, the Black Lives Matter groups, the ecological groups. So I think that it's because of what we believe that we're being attacked so readily. They don't care about abortion. They really don't. They don't care about women's health. They don't care about women's rights. They don't care about access to health care. What they care about is what abortion gives them. Abortion gives the politically elite absolute power, the ability to decide who lives and who dies. And it's a slippery slope because if the government is allowed to decide

there are certain categories of human beings that are disqualified from protection under the law, working at the amendment, then who's next? Your neighbor, your grandmother, the, you know, the people that are too expensive, the people that are not producing, the people that are, you know, maybe pro-life that are standing in your way, that are inconvenient. This is a terrible, terrible kind of knife's edge moment that America is on right now. And it just so happens that the flashpoint is abortion because they know what it means. Are there steps that pro-life centers, specifically in blue states, should be taking to protect themselves so that maybe there hasn't been maybe legislation in their state yet that targets pro-life centers? But are there things

that centers should be doing to prepare and to make sure that they can continue. serving women in their state no matter what comes down the line? That is a great question. And I think there is things that pregnancy centers in particular can do to continue to protect their place in the public square so that they can be, they can continue to do their life-saving work. I think, number one, the executives and the boards need to steal themselves, if you will, get ready for being attacked and for being sued. We're going to have activist lawyers coming out of the woodwork, I believe, and trying to file lawsuits.

They'll be frivolous, and hopefully the judiciary will come down on that, but steal themselves against the inevitable attacks, litigious attacks, also the legislative attacks. Be ready to speak out and be ready to speak up about the fact that we have the moral high ground. We are doing what is right. We are providing informed consent to women facing unplanned pregnancy while the abortion industry and get educated on the fraud that is the abortion industry because the public debate has to happen and they don't want the public debate to happen. They think that if they can make the pregnancy center a defendant or the brunt of a legislative investigation, it will vilify them, demonize them,

and garner public sentiment to regulate them out of business. And that's what their goal is. So stand up, be ready to speak out, educate yourself on the fraud that is abortion in your state, whether it's Massachusetts or New York or Illinois, California, or New Mexico, these people are, and be ready to speak the truth forcefully. It doesn't mean you're not a Christian if you're speaking the truth forcefully. Jesus spoke the truth very forcefully in his ministry. And, you know, so live out your faith. You're going to be attacked for working for the oppressed and the orphaned.

Stand firm in it, no matter what comes your way. You know, let your faith be on display in your own. endurance when it comes. That's beautiful. Reverend Hardin, would you just share briefly a little bit about the work that you all do at Compass Care, how many women you all serve every year and how listeners can get involved? Yeah, I'd be happy to. Compass Care provides ethical, medical care, comprehensive community support, providing for

the unmet health and resource needs of women seriously considering abortion all across New York State and through telecare. Our goal is to cut the time it takes for a woman to get to a pro-life nurse from 24 hours to 24 seconds. She's traveling now. The abortion industry's business model has shifted. She's traveling to an abortion upstate to get an abortion like New York or California. Or she's going online to get these dangerous chemical abortion drugs illegally shipped to her in the mail without any kind of diagnosis or physician supervision. So we do that.

Telecare, we serve thousands of patients every year. And we also help pregnancy centers to get the training and tools. the 20-per-century tools they need to compete with their abortion industry in their region. So the other thing that we do is, you know, things like this, where we seek to protect the pregnancy centers from attack in the public square. So they can continue to do what they do, free from attacks and censorship and that sort of thing. So they can go to compasscarecommunity.com to learn more compasscarecommunity.com to learn more about how we're helping women and babies from being essentially abused and killed

in abortion. Excellent. Reverend Hardin of Compass Care. Thank you so much, Reverend, for your time today and for highlighting this issue. And we really look forward to continuing to tracking what is going on specifically with this lawsuit in Illinois and also just across the country as pro-life pregnancy centers continue to put a stake in the ground and say that they will protect and defend women in their time of need and beyond. So thank you for the work that you're doing and for joining us today. My pleasure. Thank you. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us for The Daily Signal podcast.

If you've never had the chance, make sure that you check out our evening show. It's right here in this exact same podcast feed. And every weekday, around 5 p.m., we bring you the top news of the day so you can stay informed on what is happening in our world. Also, make sure that you take a moment to subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You never miss out on new shows. And take just a moment to leave us.

us a five-star rating and review. Thanks again for being with us today. Have a great Monday. We'll see you right back here at 5 p.m. for our top news edition. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation.

Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.