Vermont has amended a law that pro-life pregnancy centers claimed censored their ability to advertise. Vermont lawmakers approved a measure late last week to modify language in Senate Bill 37, a law passed in May 2023 that aimed to curb “misleading” advertisements by pro-life pregnancy care centers.
The conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom filed a stipulated dismissal of the case of National Institute of Family and Life Advocates et al v. Clark et al last Thursday, following the law’s amendment.
Anne O'Connor, vice president of legal affairs at NIFLA, stated,“the state has backed away from attacking the work of pro-life pregnancy centers.”
She added, “Pregnancy centers are no longer under direct threat from the law and pro-abortion lobby in Vermont,” and expressed that, “for this, NIFLA celebrates; however, if in the future the state again decides to unconstitutionally pursue the work of pro-life pregnancy centers, NIFLA stands ready to take Vermont back to court and seek appropriate relief.”
Signed by Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott in May 2023, S.37 defined pregnancy centers that do not offer abortions or emergency contraception as “limited-services” centers. It prohibited them from advertising “what is untrue or clearly designed to mislead the public about the nature of services provided.”
Under the law, pregnancy centers could face fines of up to $10,000 if the Vermont attorney general deemed their advertising misleading.
The lawsuit, filed in July 2023 by the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, Aspire Now, and the Branches Pregnancy Resource Center, argued that the law “censored the centers’ ability to advertise their free services” and “precluded centers from offering non-medical services, information, and counseling unless provided by a licensed health care provider.”
It described the law as offering a “vague and viewpoint-discriminatory” standard for misinformation, stating it “provides no guidance as to how it should be applied to advertisements including medical information on which there is no medical consensus.”
Supporters of abortion claim that these centers manipulate women into choosing life and use “deceptive” strategies to lure women away from abortion clinics. Critics also allege that pregnancy centers lie about their services by posing as medical clinics.
However, as highlighted in a 2024 report titled Pregnancy Centers Offer Hope for a New Generation by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, more than 2,750 pregnancy centers serve women and families nationwide.
The report noted that throughout 2022, the total value of material goods and services provided by pregnancy centers exceeded $367 million, and that 97.4% of clients reported positive experiences and satisfaction with the care they received.
