A pro-life marketing organization is fighting a lawsuit filed by a Massachusetts abortion facility that seeks to suppress the agency’s pro-life speech.
Four Women Health Services sued Choose Life Marketing earlier this year, claiming that its pro-life marketing efforts mislead women seeking abortions, according to a news release from Thomas More Society. Thomas More Society is a nonprofit legal organization representing Choose Life Marketing and one of the agency’s clients, a pro-life pregnancy center called Abundant Hope.
Choose Life Marketing’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts June 3. According to the release, the agency’s marketing practices include promoting pregnancy centers’ resources for women, such as alternatives to abortion, adoption resources, and material assistance.
Peter Breen, executive vice president and head of litigation at Thomas More Society, noted in a news release that former Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakely, who has a history of targeting pro-life speech, is representing Four Women Health Services. Breen said that Coakely and the abortion provider are “attempting to tear up the First Amendment and suppress speech they disagree with.”
“Choose Life’s amplification of the reach of pregnancy centers in Massachusetts is lawful and protected by the First Amendment, no matter how the abortion industry tries to twist it,” he added.
According to Thomas More Society, the June 3 motion to dismiss is the second motion attorneys have had to file in the case, as the court previously permitted Four Women Health Services to rewrite their original complaint and add Choose Life Marketing as a defendant.
Nathan Loyd, staff counsel at Thomas More Society, called the lawsuit “meritless.”
“At core, the abortion provider fears that the pro-life message is more persuasive than its own pro-abortion message,” he added. “It thinks it will make more money by silencing pro-life speech.”