ACLJ’s Massive Fight Across 28 States

Today on Sekulow, ACLJ's massive fight for life across 28 states, keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls too at 1-800-684-3110.

If you want to be on the air, that's 1-800-684-3110. You're going to do a number of issues today, but the first half hour of the broadcast, we are working in 28 different states right now, the American Center for Law and Justice. 52 different kinds of actions. So everything from being in court, from amicus briefs, policy, testifying before state legislatures, all on life. This is just on the life issue, but within that issue you've got speech issues, you have issues on new legislation that states want to pass in light of coming up with the Dobbs case that we believe we'll get the opinion on in June from the U.S. Supreme Court. We have states that are doing good things. About 26 states right in the country, and that's what the abortion industry is doubling down on that number. They believe 26 states would adopt similar measures to the state of Mississippi's, which is the 15-week ban and heartbeat legislation. So all these different ways the ACLJ is engaging on the life issue in light of what may be coming from the Supreme Court, and then you're also getting a sense out of two purple states, I would say now, of what the left is planning to do. So in Maryland, for instance, and we'll get to what happened in Michigan. In Maryland, the governor there is a Republican who is fairly pro-life, Governor Hogan, and he vetoed legislation to expand abortion there, to allow abortion to be performed.

I mean, this is when it gets pretty absurd. It would allow abortion to be performed by physician's assistants, midwives, and nurse practitioners, and the state is actually going to use taxpayer dollars, $3.5 million, to train those physician's assistants and nurse practitioners and midwives to perform abortions. So it won't be doctors anymore, and using state resources to do it. The governor vetoed it, but the veto was overridden by the state legislature, which is Democrat and left controlled. That's, again, an example of the kind of battle, post-Dobbs, that we can see they're starting to prepare in Michigan. The governor, because her legislature is not going to do it, it's Republican right now, but the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, is filing a lawsuit against a state law from the 1950s, pre-Roe, that would be the law of the state if Dobbs is decided in life's favor.

Put it that way. And so she's actually filing to try and get this law to be declared unconstitutional under the state law. So you're starting to see proactive moves before, so it's not reactive to Dobbs, it is proactive to Dobbs. State funding, trying to remove any state legislation that may still be on the books that was overridden by Roe vs. Wade for all these years, but then would actually revert back to the law of the state. So what you've got is, and this is not, we've anticipated this, so we're prepared for this.

I want to be clear on this. What we anticipated was that if, in fact, Dobbs declares Roe vs. Wade, not the law of the land or unconstitutional, or even doesn't go that far but says a 15-week Hart bill legislation like in Mississippi is, in fact, constitutional, what you're going to see is states go proactively into their state court systems to try to get a right to abortion recognized under the state law. Now, it's not going to be all the states, but I would say probably more than 20 states will go in that direction. At the ACLJ, let me tell you what we're doing. We've got 52 matters we're involved in right now. We're involved in legislation and drafting legislation in a number of states currently, testifying currently, preparing for a court of appeals argument at the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals pending the disposition of Dobbs. So there's a lot, where we represent South Dakota, there's a lot of activity going on. We're going to get into all of that, what it means, how we continue to stand for life, what it's going to look like post Roe vs. Wade.

That's the key to all of this. So we want to take your phone calls as well. You may have questions about what's happening in your state on the life issue 1-800-684-3110. And let me let you know as well, we're going to get into issues involving the economy, and Syria, and Russia, and Ukraine, and how Syria is involved because of the butcher of Syria now in charge of Ukraine for Russia.

We'll talk about all of that today on the broadcast. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our Matching Challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, the play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. Welcome back to Sekulow.

We are taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-301-TEEN. Sephrena wrote in on Facebook, thank you for your work protecting the life of the unborn. This is why I support the ACLJ. And again, we can go through it. I mean, starting with, again, 28 states. And within those states, some of those were doing multiple things, up to five different issues we're working on. So, you know, you can start in Arkansas where there's, again, you've got an issue involving a pro-life pregnancy center and a law on a heartbeat bill. There's litigation there as well. There's also a Down syndrome abortion ban. In effect, that is being held at the Supreme Court, pinning Dobbs.

So that's actually at the U.S. Supreme Court, pinning Dobbs. We filed on that one too. Yeah, and in California, we're just starting through the list alphabetically here, folks. In California, we've got Planned Parenthood case, that's an ACLJ case.

Yeah, we actually represent Troy Newman, who was brought into this lawsuit that Planned Parenthood filed against the Center for Medical Progress that was on all of those admissions that you saw that Planned Parenthood made as to their operating practice, including the sale of body parts, the alleged sale of body parts. And that case is now at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. But, Cece, when you look at the number of states and then you basically more than double it with the number of actions, we got 28 states, 52 current actions that the ACLJ is working on.

Right. The fight for life is definitely at a height, and it's going to continue. I know people keep thinking if Dobbs comes down and Roe v. Wade is overturned, the battle's over.

But as we can see, it's not. Again, we have 28 states that we're currently fighting in, 52 actions, and I think that's going to just exponentially increase when the Dobbs decision comes down. I really do think what's going to happen is that the states of, like you said in Wisconsin, those states, and I'm looking at some of the ways they're phrasing it, I think what you're going to see happen is that they'll rely on their state constitutions as the basis upon which they will recognize a right to Roe v. Wade or an abortion right.

Right. It will go to the state constitutions, and even as we see in Michigan, as I know you were talking about that issue going on in Michigan, the arguments that they're making in Michigan are basically the Roe arguments that are the bad arguments, the due process clause, the right to privacy, all these basically concocted rights. But they're going to, now we're going to see that battle at the state supreme courts. Yeah, I mean, you can move to Colorado, a state life project they were working on, opposing a bill that would expand Roe.

Again, that's the same kind of issue. Yeah, Naomi, who's watched on YouTube, said, is Colorado paving the way for state laws? And she said that you're in a state right now where they're proposing radical legislation on abortion, so it would actually be worse than Roe, which is very open-ended on its own.

If you're just talking about Roe and not the cases that came subsequent to Roe that started putting limits on abortion and partial birth abortion, and you're saying we're just going to expand Roe, and this is the issue we talked about. If we win that case, it's a huge win, whether Roe vs. Wade has overturned or essentially gutted the law, and it's no longer a law that really governs the states. You're going to see some very good legislation states, and we're going to get to those as well. There's states doing good things.

It's not all bad. In fact, it's about half the states of the country, a little bit more, 26 that will want to put forward good pro-life legislation. Some will have to do steps to even alter their own state constitutions, where it's been slipped in there under some amendment in the last 40 years. And so the Michigan law we're talking about dates back to the 1930s. Because originally, prior to Roe vs. Wade, the act of abortion was considered the taking of human life, and in almost every state was illegal, except usually life of the mother, and then the exception for incest and rape.

So generally, it was a prohibited activity. So if you roll back the Roe vs. Wade law, and the other laws haven't been repealed, you end up with a pro-life legislation in a state that's not pro-life. So that's why these governors that are anti-life are going to go in aggressively.

And they're going to be aggressive. They are. And just like you said, life was protected because the issue was really about killing a baby, instead of what they try to make it now, medical decisions or health care decisions. Abortion is not a health care decision. It is killing a baby. And they try to spin it and make it a reproductive health care and right to privacy.

And so hopefully, life will be protected once again. In Maryland, now we're seeing it in California, but this is a new blog. It's going to go up on ACLJ.org. So we're going back to California.

We have a lot of listeners there and supporters of the ACLJ in California. This is happening in your state legislature. So there's a law put forward by the Democrat majority committee in the state legislature there. And the Democrats analyzed this. They actually had their legal analysis done. And this is what they said.

And I want to put this out there because we were flagged on Facebook because of this in Maryland. This is the Democrats' own legal analysis for the Democrat majority committee in California. And it stated, quote, the perinatal death language could lead to an unintended and undesirable conclusion. They go on. This is Democrats.

Okay. It may not be sufficiently clear that perinatal death is intended to be the consequence of a pregnancy complication. Thus, this bill could be interpreted to immunize a pregnant person from all criminal penalties for all pregnancy-related outcomes, including the death of a newborn for any reason during the post-pregnancy period after birth. Including a cause of death, which is not attributable to pregnancy complications. Thus, child abuse.

Malnutrition. Intentional. Intentionally killing that child would not be covered because they're using this new term, which we've been pointing out in Maryland, California, perinatal, which is at birth and post-birth.

It could be up to a month after birth. And this is the one that did get flagged, by the way, on Facebook. So if you're on Facebook, head on over to Rumble because this could get flagged again.

Who knows? But we're just going to tell you the truth. But what's interesting about this is that we are taking a very proactive position as well because we're looking at all these states where we can bolster our arguments.

Right. So we've actually, once we identified this perinatal language, we have looked into every single state if they have legislation that includes this language. Is there any other states that have perinatal? Yes, we have and we've sent letters and so we have a whole project that is informing all these states, be careful about this because if you say perinatal, like Jordan said, if you say that, that is up to one month after birth. So if that baby is killed or dies for any reason, they're exempt from any criminal charges.

So think about that for a moment. And here's where I'm really pleased with our legal team. They thought they could slip that in and not get noticed. And of course, as soon as we did point it out, by the way, again, I want to point this out because of the big tech sensors, Facebook tried to flag it and say we were making a false statement, which by the way, they had it correct and said we were not because our lawyers actually testified on it.

So I want to be clear on that. Yeah, I mean, the problem is you have 20 year old fact checkers in college who probably didn't look up the word perinatal versus prenatal and it's intentionally being used by the abortion industry to cover late term abortions or any kind of abortions at the state level in the states where they've got support. So what we have to look at this is say Dobbs would be an incredible victory because you return the battle back to the states. And again, as I said, about more than half the country, but at least 26 states are going to put in good pro-life legislation. They at least want to. They're going to need help.

They're going to need assistance. They're all going to be legally challenged and a lot of them in the state courts. But the second thing is you're going to see some of these more radical states taking action. I mean, California's governor, Governor Newsom, has talked about literally flying people in for free so that they can get their abortion, like an abortion vacation. And again, so that shows you what a kind of huge state might do with their resources. Maryland taking $3.5 million in this past. They overrode the governor's veto there. Governor tried to veto it, do the right thing. They're going to use $3.5 million to train non-doctors to perform abortions.

I mean, think about that for a minute. The one that shows you, I think, the doctors are done doing abortions in Maryland because it's wrong. And so they're trying to find a new group of people to carry them out for money. And we'll take calls when we come back from the break because we're getting calls on this 1-800-684-3110.

That's 800-684-3110. What I find fascinating about this is this is happening all prior to the decision in Dobbs, which we should have. It's now the 10th or 11th of April. So we're probably, you know, six weeks out or so, maybe a little bit more, no more than two months out for the decision in Dobbs.

I mean, it's coming. And they're already taking action in these various states to undercut what they perceive to be as a pro-life decision that's going to come out in favor of life. That's what's going on right now.

Yeah, they're scared about what Dobbs is going to say. And so they're trying to take, you know, be proactive and get laws on the books that make sure that abortion is legal in their states. And currently, 16 states do have laws that keep abortion legal if Roe is overturned.

So we're going to have our work cut out, but I wanted to say at the outset, Jordan, we are preemptively engaging it already. 20, would we say 52 actions in 22 states? 28 states. 28 states.

28 states. So you can support the work of the ACLJ. We have a matching challenge right now at ACLJ.org. Double your impact of your donation the entire month of April. The easy way to explain it is you donate 25 bucks at ACLJ.org right now. That means we have a group of donors that will match that. So it's like $50 for the American Center for Law and Justice.

You can do the math for these donations. But it's quick. ACLJ.org. It's secure. It's a great way to support this effort because just like the abortion industry, they're not saying, oh, wait, we lose this case and we're going to give up. This is an industry. They make money off this, a billion dollar a year industry.

And so they're going to fight and we have to have the resources to fight back. ACLJ.org, donate today. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, the Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith. I'm covering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress. The ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our matching challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family.

Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. All right, welcome back to Sekulow. We're going to take your calls on this at 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. Let's go first to Rena in California on Line 3.

Hi, Rena. Hi, yeah, we're talking about this big time out here with my friends. I have friends who, as I'm speaking, are on the front lines of abortion at the clinics right now, and they're concerned about this. So my question is, and this is what they're saying, since abortion is not legal under our Constitution, doesn't it then stand to reason that under any state constitution it cannot be legal? I mean, there'll be arguments made like that, but we were just talking about this in the free speech context. Let me give you, for instance, we have the First Amendment Free Speech Clause, and it protects freedom of speech, freedom of association, and all this.

But then free speech, it's broad. In New York and California, actually, your state constitution's right to freedom of speech are broader and more protective than the federal constitution. So the question becomes, can a state, all the Supreme Court is going to say is it returns to the states. If Roe goes, this whole issue returns to the states.

That's what's going to be the kind of end of this, and when I say the end of it, the next phase of this, which means states like California are going to be tough to deal with. Right. So it's not that the U.S. Constitution criminalizes abortion. It just says there's no constitutionally recognized right to abortion.

Literally. Right. And so then the states can say, well, we do recognize it, or we don't recognize it. And I think what you're going to see, you will see in these left-leaning, solidly blue states, where I know a lot of you live, there are big states a lot of times where you've got a lot of conservatives, a lot of people who are pro-life, but you're going to see radical action taken, both in going way past what Roe versus Wade was about when it came to abortion and the subsequent cases on partial birth abortion. But also, they're going to continue to target the pregnancy centers.

We're seeing that throughout our cases as well in New York, in California, and in other states. So you'll see also an attack on the pro-life movement. So this is, it's a two-fold issue, like you were talking about speech, the ability for the pro-life movement to continue to exist in these states. And secondly, secondly, radical abortion laws, where you've literally, in Maryland, I go back to, they're going to spend taxpayer dollars to train non-doctors to perform medical procedures, which can cause seriously medical complications. Think about that for a minute. They're so committed to the cause of abortion that they will put aside all standard best practices of medicine and say, because it's an abortion surgery, which it is, we're not going to apply those best practices of medicine because we're so committed to this procedure of abortion. We've challenged those two, by the way.

Absolutely. And it shows you, again, they always try to say, you know, oh, this is, we're about the woman and we're about the woman's right. Well, they're not, because if they were, then they would want you protected when you have a medical procedure. Yeah, like clean surgical equipment.

That's exactly right. They fight against sterile surgical equipment, anything that they can fight against. It's not about the woman. They don't care at all about her. It's about the business of abortion. The comment from Joan on YouTube is interesting because it said, I'm adopted. I'm living proof that there are alternatives to aborting innocent babies. Politicians who claim to be against capital punishment for murderers have no problem executing the innocent unborn. And you know, that's true. And it's also true that the medical science has shown clearly that the unborn child is a life worthy of constitutional protection.

The medicine is clear. What's not clear, okay, is what's going to happen right after Dobbs and how we move. So that's why we're galvanizing our resources right now to deal with that. Let's take another call at 800-684-3110. Yeah, Stuart calling from Maryland on Line 1. Hey, Stuart.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call. I think you spoke to my question a little bit, but here it is.

So obviously I live in Maryland. Okay. Very clear here. There is a measure currently being debated within our state government that would basically enshrine the right to an abortion. And it's going to be put on the fair end goal is to put this as a measure on our ballot. So if this goes to the voters, it's going to pass. It's so deep here and we're doing everything we can through the means that they're allowing, you know, going to these town hall formats against this. But the Democrats in charge, they don't care. Yeah.

Well, no, I mean, they are beholden to this industry. So that's why I keep telling everybody we can have a great victory. It'd be worth celebrating because it will protect a lot of lives. I mean, in half the country, abortion is going to go down to a very, very small number.

We're not going to see those hundreds of thousands number that we see every year. But what you were going to see in the deeply blue states is like what you're saying in Maryland, where they, you know, they've pushed through on the training, non non doctors to perform abortion. They're going to use your money as taxpayers to do that. But it's the second. We're also involved in that legislation you talked about, Cece, because that's the legislation where they use that term. Perinatal, like California is trying to do as well, which would expand abortion right up until till birth till birth and even after birth.

Right. So it's not enough in some of these states that they've protected abortion. They want to make sure that they protect it, like you're saying, even after birth, because perinatal includes the month after a baby is born. And so a baby could be killed for any reason after that. Which is absurd because it complicates all the state laws, the child services provisions to make sure that newborn children, if they're once born to a drug addict, that there's protections in place right now that in those states, that drug doesn't take care of that child and they die in that month.

These kind of laws would prevent them from taking action before that child gets killed. Do you remember was the governor of Virginia prior to the new governor of Virginia? What was his name? I can't remember his name right now. Ralph Northam.

Ralph Northam, who famously said, well, even if a baby survived abortion, that what we should do is make that child comfortable and then basically take out his life. Have a discussion. Have a discussion.

Have a discussion about how to handle it. Now, look, that we said was absurd. Who could be thinking that way? Why in the world would anybody want to do that?

Here's the reality. A lot of states' legislators are looking at doing things like that. Yeah.

This is not immune to, this is not isolated to Ralph Northam. No, it's not isolated to Maryland because now we're seeing it pop up in California. So when we start seeing a pattern in legislation where they start using this new term, which was not in previous abortion legislation.

Yeah, I was in it. When you start seeing that new term pop up that then covers this period from birth and 28 days longer, you know, 30 days longer, this is something the abortion industry is obviously coordinating. So it is no accident, Cece, that they decided, the abortion industry decided to use the word perinatal, despite the fact that the censors at Facebook said it wasn't the way it was written.

It was exactly how, like they said there wasn't even a hearing. And of course there was a hearing in legislation, but that's, but using that word isn't, I mean, they're doing that intentionally. That's not an unintentional move.

That's correct. That's intentional and they know what they're doing. And again, it's because they're not even satisfied once they have legislation, because I believe Maryland already has legislation that protects the right to abortion. They want to expand it. So now they're going to make you pay for abortions. They're going to make insurance cover abortions. They're going to let non-physicians do abortions. You're just going to see it expand and expand and expand.

Okay. So Lucien on Facebook said, when these laws are passed by the states and they are challenged in state court, is there any federal path for challenge at that point? Depending on what Dobbs decides, I think what we're going to find ourselves in is state courts, because there's going to be no federally recognized right to abortion. Thus, the question is going to be under their state constitution, okay, under the state constitution, is there an authority to have this right to abortion recognized? And I think the reality is, this is my view, that we are going to be fighting in these states very, very aggressively.

When we get the next half hour program, I want to talk about what that looks like. But folks, that's why we need your support at the ACLJ. Well, you got to think about this too. You might have a very red state, but the way your Supreme Court may be set up that ultimately determines this might be very bizarre. Your elected officials might have a little role in that in some of those states. In other states, they are elected by like politicians. And so they may reflect better the state. I mean, so you can't take for granted just because you're in a red state that your courts are going to be good either, necessarily.

Some are very bad because of the system set up to appoint those courts. So support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. It's a matching challenge month. You double the impact of your donation. That's at ACLJ.org.

At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

Hey, welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. We wouldn't put this out too far for our listeners because it's important for people to know what it's like dealing with Planned Parenthood. If you've dealt with them in the past, if you were someone who had one of these pregnancy issues and someone pointed you to Planned Parenthood, this could have been decades ago, and you're willing to share that story, share it with our audience. They need to know the truth. We put that out a lot through documentaries and through videos and interviews that people, when they're willing to talk about their experience with these abortion providers and the pressure and the issues that go into it. So 1-800-684-3110, if you want to tell people about that so that they understand who we're really up against in these battles, 1-800-684-3110.

You just said who we're up against, and I think we need to be very clear on this too. Planned Parenthood, and Than always talks about this, is ever present in Washington, D.C. on Capitol Hill. They've been able to keep their funding. We saw some of it go down during the Trump administration, but they're able to keep their funding in place even when Republicans had the House and the Senate and the White House.

So you've got to understand something. If you think they're going to give up because the Supreme Court decision comes down, well, guess again. That's not going to happen now.

It will change drastically the battle, and it will focus the battle. But we're talking about, you know, right now we're talking about 52 actions in 28 states. That will expand. To all 50?

To all 50, sure. I am also looking at, I mean, I'm looking at some of the cases that we're involved in right now. We just finished a trial for sidewalk counselors. Sidewalk counselors and crisis pregnancy centers seem to get the focus of the abortion litigation when it's not on some state constitutional ground because the presence of the sidewalk counselor offering an alternative or the crisis pregnancy center offering hope and an alternative is something Planned Parenthood and these groups do not like them to exist.

Right, because it goes to their bottom line. When pregnant women who are considering abortion hear the alternatives and hear the truth, they genuinely and most likely change their opinion and keep the baby. And Planned Parenthood cannot have that happen. And remember, in California, the current HHS secretary put in place a law that required the pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to have advertisements up in their offices on where you could get an abortion. And we challenged that at the Supreme Court, and then we had three cases.

All three of those were victories. But just think about how the pro-abortion movement, and now they've got people in very high places, are willing to do this. And this is why you've got to fight back and fight back aggressively.

They are a juggernaut. They have billion-dollar budgets. You know, we're happy with our budget and we're thrilled with our donor support. It is not one-tenth of what they have, and we're fighting back and beating them in court. We beat them in court in the Gulf Coast region for the significant monetary damage. We just tried a case in New Jersey. Our guys are working, our team is working on one right now in Kentucky. We've got an appeal going on in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals involving the Center for Medical Progress. We've got an appeal from Governor Noem in South Dakota that we just filed the reply brief this last week. All of this is happening simultaneously right now as we're talking to you. This is why you need to support the work of the American Center for Law and Justice in our Matching Challenge campaign.

I believe we're going to have a great victory in Dobbs. That's going to increase our work, not decrease it. So Jordan's going to let you know how to do this, folks. We really need you to help us out.

Yeah, that's right. The ACLJ.org is going to be part of our Matching Challenge right now to double the impact to your donation. What that means is, just very simply, if you donate $20 to the ACLJ, we're going to match that. Our donors are ready to match that donation, so it's like $40 to the ACLJ. $50 is like $100 to the ACLJ. So you understand you can double the impact at a time when we have to redouble our efforts, because you're talking about 50 states in the country, about half that are going to want to put in good pro-life legislation, that are going to get legal challenged.

They're going to be fought. We need to help them with the language. We are already doing that in many states. And then the other half of the country is going to go the other way. They want to use your taxpayer dollars to train non-doctors to do abortion.

They want to use this new term, perinatal, to cover even post-birth killing of these children. So we have to be ready. Donate today at ACLJ.org. Help us prepare for the battle ahead. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our Matching Challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases. How we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists. The ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later. Play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry. And what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. We're using examples of good things that are happening, but we also want to highlight the fight that is going on right now as we speak because of what the Supreme Court might do. So when you go to Governor Whitmer in Michigan, and she can't use her state legislature there because it's Republican pro-life. So she's utilizing an action which allows the governor to bring legal action against laws that are on the books in Michigan, which they believe might be unconstitutional in the state constitution. And so there's a 1930s law basically banning abortion, which would be the law of the land if the Supreme Court were to totally overturn Roe v. Wade or make it inoperable in the state of Michigan. So she explains why she's doing it and on Twitter said today I'm filing a lawsuit to keep abortion legal in Michigan because of SCOTUS willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade. I'm using my authority as governor to go directly to Michigan Supreme Court. So it also bypasses.

Yes, it goes directly to the Supreme Court. It's bold but necessary and here's why. Now here's the big lie. First I want you to be extremely clear, however we personally feel about abortion, health, not politics, should drive important medical decisions. Right there, she's already using the term that allows abortion for any reason at all.

Health. And the way that's been interpreted in courts is that is so open-ended that it's like I don't feel good today, I want to have an abortion. So everything that they say on abortion is carefully crafted by the abortion industry. But here's what I get to.

Here's the kind of silver lining in this. It takes her one, two, three, four, five, five tweets to justify her action to people because she knows in her state, which is a purple state now, so it's not deeply blue, that in her state this is a borderline issue. So she has to try to explain away, it's not even necessarily that I support abortion, but I want abortion, no restriction at all.

Well this is how she does it. She says, and I'm looking at the second tweet here, you may not know that Michigan has an abortion ban on the books from 1931. By the way, almost every state did. Currently this outdated unconstitutional law, why is it unconstitutional? Because of Roe versus Wade, is superseded by the decision in Roe versus Wade, which may well be overturned in the next six to 12 weeks. However, if Roe is overturned in a few weeks, the ban goes into effect, abortion becomes illegal.

So let's stop with that one for a moment. So what she's saying right there is she's taking preemptive action at the Michigan Supreme Court under the fear, Cece, that something might change. That's, I mean, you talk about committed, you got to give them this, they are committed to their abortion agenda.

Right. And what's interesting too, again, you know, she uses the reproductive freedom and health, which this is a baby's life. It's not about, it's not healthcare, it's not reproductive freedom.

They never want to talk about, I want to uphold the right of a woman to kill a baby. And what's interesting is she wants to go to the Supreme Court, but there is a 1997 Court of Appeals ruling that says the Michigan Constitution does not recognize the right to an abortion. Which is precisely why she wants to go to the Michigan Supreme Court.

Absolutely. So now she's going to the Supreme Court to see if they'll say something different. Because the appellate division, you know, the one court below it has already said there is not that right. Then the next one says, if that happens, talking about if abortion becomes illegal, nearly 2.2 million women lose access to legal abortion. Let me put it into perspective for you.

They lose their reproductive freedom, economic freedom, and are denied the right to chart their own destiny. That's how they're selling it. Yeah, again, it's this idea that it's a right that we're going to take away from women if we have any restrictions whatsoever. Let me go back to what the Mississippi law does.

It's at 20 weeks. And that was too much for them. But they're going to try to flip this in about half the states of the country to say, it's not about that. We now need abortion post-birth. I mean, that's where they're going with these laws. That's why they're using the language perinatal. Definitely that's being obviously pushed by the abortion lobbyists.

But doesn't, you know, she goes on to say, and like Jordan said, this takes five tweets to get this out. Then she says, no matter what happens to Roe, I'm going to fight like expletive omitted and use all the tools I have as governor to ensure the reproductive freedom is protected. Today in court, I represent all those who deserve the freedom to choose their own future. That's a fight worth having.

She has already filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of Michigan to try to get a preemptive decision that if the Supreme Court says Roe versus Wade goes into effect, their ban on abortion in Michigan is out the window. Realize what you're dealing with here. This is how aggressive they're fighting. Now, how do you fight back?

You got to be very aggressive. So we're going to have to get briefs in there and say, well, that's law would be in fact constitutional. We'd have to look under the Michigan, you know, Supreme Court decisions. But this is, it's going to be a very technical battle coming up. It will be. And again, I think people think, you know, if Dobbs comes down the right way, which we are hopeful that it will, that abortion goes away.

It does not. Our fight actually just begins again and now in every single one of the 50 states. And it's a very different fight when it's, you know, it'll be, listen, Dobbs coming down is a big help because it'll eliminate, there'll be a lot of pro-life states. We're good there. They're not going to, but they are going to focus all that money that they would have spent on 50 states. They'll focus it on the 22 they think they can win.

Yeah, exactly. And then they're still in some of your red states, the way your Supreme Court selected is not necessarily so great. And so you might have these judicial boards that decide and really put forward nominees to the governor who can pick from this group. And then the people who are nominated to be on those boards are not necessarily always so conservative.

They come a lot of academia. So you could be in a solidly red state and it could still be not a battle so much in the state legislature with the governor, but then a battle in your state courts again. And again, we also have to remember there is a Democrat House and Senate with a Democrat pro-abortion President in office right now. If this, I could see them, and I think it'd be an uphill battle in the Senate especially, but pre-midterms trying to codify abortion as a federal right again. They've tried to do this a number of times in light of what the Supreme Court does, and they've got a President who would sign it. Biden would sign it. So the question is, can they get it through the Senate?

I don't think they've got the 60 votes, but it is pretty darn close. Look, you go to New York. We've got two cases in New York right now. You know this is a pro-abortion state. So in the first case, we got a board member of the Adirondack Pregnancy Center. Now these are the pro-life pregnancy centers.

The centers received initial approval from the village to proceed with its building and operation. But the high peaks, socialist Democrats of America is campaigning to have that approval rescinded. Yeah, so we're starting to see these groups from across the country, the communist groups, starting to lead opposition. So you see how the far left again, which is really taking over the Democrat party, because as I said, if they could get through the legislation in the House and Senate right now, they would. It would codify as a federal right, so an abortion is a federal right, and Biden would sign it right now.

So we're going to have to watch that. So on the federal level, you have to watch very carefully because there's a couple squishy Republicans on that issue as well in the U.S. Senate. So I don't know if they can get through the 60-vote threshold. I don't think they can, but we can't put it past them even at the federal level. In the New York case I was just talking about, so you've got the socialist Democrats of America, so they've got a political party here that is trying to shut down the crisis pregnancy center. Jeff Surtees and Frank Manion are handling that matter right now.

It's under review and pending right now. The question is, why are they so opposed to a crisis pregnancy center being able to offer an adoption, an abortion option, which could include adoption? Because they have focused on these like a laser beam.

I've been talking about this for 40 years. Right, crisis pregnancy centers are always the target because they are the centers that offer alternatives to abortion. They will do free ultrasounds, and when a woman sees her baby, she typically chooses to continue to carry that baby and not have an abortion. They give you lots of options for adoption. They will help even afterwards. If it is an economic concern, they will help you with providing for that baby, getting diapers and things like that, getting you kind of set up with other organizations that will help.

And that cuts into the bottom line of Planned Parenthood, which is in the business of abortion and killing babies, and they don't want babies saved. I mean, we're only through New York here. I got another one in New York.

So here's in New York right now. The New York office of administrative trials and hearings, we've had a case with the New York Department of Consumer Affairs versus EMC pregnancy centers we've represented for many years. They've challenged, they issued summonses to the center.

The center responded. The city filed its response on March 2nd. We now have an appeal pending in Manhattan on that one. Now, we're just through New York.

We haven't gone to North Carolina yet. And in North Carolina, if we get time or we do it the next segment, it involves the situation with crisis pregnancy centers. Again, what I'm telling you this, one is just an avocation for life to participate in an event.

The other is a crisis pregnancy center. Folks, we have got to fight for life. It's coming on a lot of different levels. I think we're going to get a good decision out of Dobbs.

It's either going to overturn Roe or at least recognize the heartbeat as a legitimate point for states to say no, you can't do it after that. But we're going to have to fight like the dickens. I'm not going to use their expletives.

To maintain a posture for life. And we have to be unapologetic when we do it. What they want is for you to say, oh, if we win that case, oh, great.

Move on to some other issues. If we do that, we're going to lose in the majority of the states because you've got a mix of bad state courts and blue states. But if we fight back, we can save a lot of lives starting on day one of that decision coming out in states that want to do the right thing or states that already are working on the legislation, have already passed it to do the right thing.

Just be prepared. Like in Maryland where they've given out millions of dollars to train non-doctors to perform abortions. Think about that. That's how beholden they are to this industry. They pay for it.

They pay for the training with your taxpayer dollars. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases. How we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists. The ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later. Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry. And what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our Matching Challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family.

Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Seck Hill. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-311. I have to say it's been a fascinating program. I hope people understand the scope and nature of what's really going on in this industry.

It is bad news. Yeah, we're starting to see the left taking action in states. And then the Socialist Democratic Party getting involved? Yeah, which is more active in some of these, especially in states like New York where you get these multi-political parties backing candidates. It happens on the right side too, but you've got literally communists who are trying to oppose a pro-life pregnancy center. The idea that they want to shut down pro-life speech as well, they're not going to give up.

They find friendly states who will take on the fight. States that are so friendly that they'll pay people for the abortion industry, which is flush with cash. It's a billion dollars a year to play a parent alone. I mean, they get nearly 500 million from our federal taxpayer dollars. And they're going to take more taxpayer dollars in the state of Maryland to pay non-doctors to train them to do abortions, which they'll get paid for. So understand, they're going to take your taxpayer dollars to train non-doctors to perform a medical procedure, invasive, could have serious complications. And then those people are going to charge money. It's like they're trying to ask them, here's a new career. And you have to wonder too, there must be a real problem with the abortion industry finding actual doctors willing to do this in Maryland anymore.

Because they don't want to. But I was going to point out on this, the proactive nature of what the ACLJ is doing too. I'm holding my hand a brief that we filed with the Supreme Court of the United States. And by the way, it was against Health and Human Services Secretary Becerra. This was in defense of crisis pregnancy centers. We won the case at the Supreme Court of the United States. That was a victory. At the same time, CC, you had a series of cases at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals also where they were trying to target crisis pregnancy centers.

So what Jordan says is exactly correct. Planned Parenthood has a plan, they have a strategy, and they always go to states or even counties within states that are pro-abortion leaning. And so we had this issue with laws going after crisis pregnancy centers in New York, in Austin, Texas, in California, and that was when they were trying to make them provide advertisement for abortion and basically it's compelled speech. And we won in New York.

And actually that's the case. It's this pregnancy service center code that we actually won on that now our client is back under that in New York that we're fighting again. Fighting the same thing again. Now, look, let's go to North Carolina. A state employee was not permitted to take community service leave for participating in a 40 Days for Life activities outside of Planned Parenthood. So we've got a demand letter going out to that. We've also sent an open letters request, which is basically a Freedom of Information Act request. Also in North Carolina, agents of Preferred Women's Health Center, an abortion clinic, have been harassing our client to the point of publishing false and misleading information about him. We have sent what's called a Preservation of Evidence letter to the clinic and to Charlotte for Choice.

Agents of the clinic and activist groups of the escorts have also been notified. We have been retained and we're representing this individual. In North Dakota, litigation over the past heartbeat bills in Arkansas and North Dakota resulted in the laws being enjoined, but with some good language in the Eighth Circuit about the need for Supreme Court to revisit the viability test, that case is up.

Now, that one cert was denied, but here's what's different. We now have another case in South Dakota, Jordan, this is important to point out, where we represent the governor. We were appointed by the Attorney General and the governor to represent their interests on an informed consent bill requiring a third party informed consent rather than just the abortion clinic who doesn't really provide much information in our view.

Yeah, that's right. And those are going to be, again, laws which states are also going to be able to enact much more easily in red states, in pro-life states, if the Dobbs case goes our way. And Planned Parenthood knows that as well. So you're going to have informed consent laws that take you out of the abortion clinic, and so you go somewhere that, again, is neutral, and it just gives the facts. This is what the abortion is going to do. If you do an ultrasound, this is what your child looks like right now. And those kind of laws, on top of good restrictions, you can see very quickly the number of abortions go down in the United States, which is good considering the only two countries in the world that have similar laws to the United States are North Korea and China.

I mean, that's who we're the company of. People think Europe is so liberal. They already have these laws. They have very similar laws to Mississippi and most European countries. In the most liberal of European countries, they have these kind of restrictions at 15 or 20 weeks, very early in pregnancy. Yeah, 12 weeks.

I think a lot of them in the European countries is at 12 weeks, and then it's got to be for, you know, yes, problems after that. So you look at Pennsylvania where we've got five active cases, five in Pennsylvania. One of them is we represent, and these are sophisticated cases, folks. We represent an OB-GYN practice associated with a hospital that was acquired by Penn State. The state is now not recognizing the conscience protections of these OB-GYNs to not engage in abortion procedures.

We have already opened our investigative process. Frank and Jeff are handling that one. We have a nurse who has a religious objection to participating in the procedures that she used as an abortive procedure.

Again, we've got that case. Kelly Ortiz, an emergency room physician. So nurses and doctors, medical professionals at a private university hospital does not want to prescribe a particular medication that induces the abortion. She's concerned the hospital will not accommodate her religious beliefs. This is just in Pennsylvania. But here's also, Jordan, go to South Carolina, the South, a pro-life state. We have two cases there, Planned Parenthood of South Atlantic versus Wilson. They challenged the post-heartbeat bill ban provision of the South Carolina Heartbeat Act. The federal district court granted a preliminary injunction, not just against the ban section, but against the entire act which contains independently functioning and valuable provisions. We're filing briefs in that case.

This is in South Carolina. You'd think you would have a friendly audience. That's why, folks, we are going to have to fight aggressively. I can't get through the entire all 52 states, all 52 actions today.

No, we can't do that on the broadcast today, but it gives you the breadth of the different kind of cases and issues that you have to deal with when you're dealing with an industry. And you are the opponent of this industry, and you are, in a sense, you're at the forefront of defunding, at the forefront of saying, you know. And now the battle could very well shift out of Washington, D.C. to your hometowns. And like Cece said, and it's important to point out, it's not even just state level.

They look at counties, cities, like the city of New York that will be more friendly to them, with city, with commissions and councils that will be more friendly. And that's where they try to take their more extreme actions or try to silence the pro-life viewpoint completely and treat it as somehow a different kind of speech in the United States of America. I think that what we have to be clear here is that this is a fight, A, worth fighting, B, that's going to get very intense post-dobs. We have to be clear on that. It's going to get very intense. Now, Dobbs, I'm expecting a great victory, but we have to be prepared for a real battle on a lot of different levels.

Policy, litigation, information across the board. Right. And not just in the states we think are pro-abortion, but just like Jordan has said, the ones that are pro-life because they want to make sure they have good laws in place, so we'll be helping them as well. Yep. Yep. So, folks, again, I encourage you to support our work. I mean, it's an issue that is going to get really nasty. It's going to get, they're going after people personally in some of our cases, like we just went through.

I mean, personal defamation of individuals running pro-life pregnancy centers. So, you have to double down for this battle if you really want to take on the abortion industry. But I believe, and I think you believe, everybody I'm talking to right now, that it's worth it because you're saving lives. Human lives.

American lives. So, you support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. We're a matching challenge the entire month of April, so you can double your impact there. It's a great time to support our work and make sure that if we get this victory at the federal level, the Supreme Court, we're ready to go across the country in all 50 states.

At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20. A $50 gift becomes $100. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org.