ACLU: We Were For Free Speech Before We Were Against It

Posted on May 5, 2006

Jeez, these guys are starting to sound like John Kerry! First the ACLU came out to endorse it, then we got hopeful as they backtracked. Now, after studying how to get around it…they are saying it is likely the bill is Constitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union has concluded after a legal review that a New York congresswoman’s proposal to regulate advertising by anti-abortion counseling centers is likely constitutional, officials with the civil liberties organization said yesterday.

Talk about flip flopping! Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, introduced March 30 the Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women’s Services Act (SDAWS), which calls on the Federal Trade Commission to bar pro-life organizations from advertising in ways that she deems “deceptive”. The law only targeted pro-life organizations, and seemed to give a pass on abortion centers with deceptive names like Planned Parenthood. What seems to bother her is that a pro-life organization calling itself something like a “Crisis Pregnancy Center.” NARAL Pro-choice America and the National Abortion Federation, are behind it. The ACLU also endorsed it, and that actually came as a shock to many free speech defenders. It even divided the house at the ACLU.

They later had second thoughts.

After an outcry from free speech advocates, the American Civil Liberties Union is reconsidering its endorsement of proposed legislation calling for federal regulation of advertising by anti-abortion counseling centers.

Of course now, it seems they have found a happy medium. It isn’t suprising that an organization that hails abortion as its top priority, putting the defense of the First Amendment third on the list, would think an amendment like this is constitutional. After all, they have a long history of being selective in defending free speech, especially when it comes to pro-lifers. In the ACLU’s eyes, restricting speech of an ideology they disagree with is constitutional, but defending psycho hate cults to protest at military funerals is protecting free speech.

But…I have to give the ACLU credit. At least they are confused and debating amongst themselves on this one. We can’t say the same thing for Planned Parenthood. Apparently, they feel so threatened by these “crisis pregnancy centers” that they are out spreading lies.

PP is circulating the story of a girl who walked into a Crisis Pregnancy Center (a clinic to help women through a difficult pregnancy) instead of the Planned Parenthood Clinic (a chop-shop for unborn babies) in the same parking lot. According to pro-abortion blog I’mNotSorry.net, the CPC then harassed the woman and called the police, claiming that a minor was being forced into an abortion against her will, and then harassed her at school and urged her classmates to harass her not to go through with it.

Which sounded a little funny and vague to John at Generations for Life, who wondered how pro-life activists can just show up at a school and start lobbying and harassing people these days. It didn’t make sense to him, so he fact-checked them something wicked. He narrowed it down to the only place in Indiana where a CPC shares a parking lot with a Planned Parenthood clinic, and…

Didn’t happen. No police report. No lawsuit. Na. Da.

See Junkyard Blog for more on that, and how there could be a case for libel.

It seems to be a popular philosophy amongst the pro-abortion crowd, that only they have free speech.

Linked at Wizbang

» Filed Under ACLU, Abortion, News

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Comments

3 Responses to “ACLU: We Were For Free Speech Before We Were Against It”

Peace Moonbeam on May 5th, 2006 11:40 am

I can certainly understand the Democrat’s fear that an ad might give women second thoughts about sucking their children down a drain. Making sure the murder of children proceeds uninterrupted remains the single most important goal of the Democratic party and liberals in general.
kerwin_brown on May 6th, 2006 1:33 am

If we were targeting deceptive advertising shouldn’t we be able to get the Democrat party to change their name as they are certainly not for democracy as they side with the ACLU. The ACLU would have to change their name also. After all they strongly believe that the American people have no liberty to do anything but what the ACLU tells them to do.
fporretto on May 6th, 2006 5:21 am

This is a special case of a wider syndrome. The Left disbelieves in free speech for persons with “incorrect” or “dangerous” views. See Herbert Marcuse’s notorious 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance” for the basis of that claim.