A San Diego supervisor pulled from consideration a plan to shut down the county’s 16 pro-life pregnancy care centers (PCC) she considered “fake and fraudulent.” Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer introduced the same agenda item last month, but failed to get enough votes. She put her plan on the agenda again for tomorrow’s meeting after a new pro-abortion supervisor was elected to fill a vacancy on the board. But last Friday, she changed her mind.
According to her office, Lawson-Remer has received a lot of calls from the community and decided to withdraw the proposal as part of “incorporating community feedback.” Her office wouldn’t say whether the proposal would return at a later date.
Last month Lawson-Remer held a press conference with Planned Parenthood representatives, calling the 16 PCCs in her county “fake centers pretending to offer reproductive health care and advice to women; luring unsuspecting women into their doors with misleading information.” She announced her plan to direct San Diego County’s Chief Administrative Officer to explore litigation to shut down the pregnancy centers and start a public education campaign to discredit the work PCCs do for mothers and their babies.
Constitutional Attorney Dean Broyles, a San Diego resident, responded in a five-page letter condemning Lawson-Remer’s plan as a “brazen and foolish attempt to misuse the power of government.” Broyles, the president of the National Center for Law and Policy, warned the supervisor her proposal was blatantly unconstitutional and would cost the county millions to defend.
Broyles has worked closely with and served as legal counsel for San Diego’s medically licensed and non-medically licensed PCCs. He called Lawson-Remer’s allegations against them, “specious and defamatory.”
“PCCs maintain high ethical standards, both in their advertising and provision of services, and do not mislead women about the scope of their services,” Broyles stated. “Ms. Lawson-Remer unquestionably hates the good life-affirming work that PCCs accomplish every week and wants to wipe PCCs off the map precisely because they disagree with her extreme positions on abortion.”
