{"id":795,"date":"2011-02-16T09:49:42","date_gmt":"2011-02-16T09:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.medic8.com\/news\/?p=795"},"modified":"2011-02-16T09:49:42","modified_gmt":"2011-02-16T09:49:42","slug":"abortion-sign-unconstitutional-6378","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/news\/abortion-sign-unconstitutional-6378\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion Sign Unconstitutional-6378"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Without doubt, if there is one issue that causes much angst and heated debate in the United States, it\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/healthguide\/abortion\/index.html\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"abortion\">abortion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This debate took a further twist recently when a federal judge decided that a sign at faith based <a href=\"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/healthguide\/pregnancyindex.htm\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"63\" title=\"pregnancy\">pregnancy<\/a> centres saying they won\u2019t help clients get an abortion was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>The debate began a year ago when Baltimore Mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake sponsored a bill in her then capacity of City Council president, requiring pregnancy centres to install a sign. The sign read something along the lines of: \u201cthe centre does not refer clients for abortion or birth control.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However Federal District Judge Marvin J. Garbis deemed this contravenes free speech and was therefore unconstitutional and against the law.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Garbis wrote: &#8220;Whether a provider of pregnancy-related services is &#8216;pro-life&#8217; or &#8216;pro-choice,&#8217; it is for the provider \u2014 not the government \u2014 to decide when and how to discuss abortion and birth-control method.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Government cannot, consistent with the First Amendment, require a &#8216;pro-life&#8217; pregnancy-related service centre to post a sign.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Judge\u2019s statement was welcomed by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, Edwin F O\u2019Brien who responded to the ruling saying: \u201cThe important and compassionate work of these pro-life pregnancy centres to continue without interference from Baltimore City.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In a statement, O&#8217;Brien said, &#8220;The ruling also upholds the constitutional rights under the First Amendment that protect private citizens such as those who work and volunteer in pregnancy centres from having to convey a government-mandated message.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The irony of this is that the aim of the sign was to inform women who wanted an abortion, that the pregnancy centre wouldn\u2019t help them.<\/p>\n<p>This ruling gives anti abortionists another small victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Without doubt, if there is one issue that causes much angst and heated debate in the United States, it\u2019s abortion. This debate took a further twist recently when a federal judge decided that a sign at faith based pregnancy centres saying they won\u2019t help clients get an abortion was unconstitutional. The debate began a year [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":888008809,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2254,169,503,455],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","tag-abortion","tag-abortion-law","tag-abortion-rights","tag-anti-abortion-groups"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/888008809"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medic8.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}