Defending Life and Liberty in NC

Family policy matters and engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina family policy Council hi this is John Ralston, presidency, family, and were grateful to have you with us for this week's program is our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that you will fall better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state and nation, and now here's our house to family policy matters. Tracy David Griggs, thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters Carolina lawmakers have made strengthening the protections for pregnant mothers and their babies a priority in recent years, much to the chagrin of the abortion industry.

As this legislative session is kicking into high gear here in North Carolina nearly a dozen pro-life bills have been filed into the general assembly look at two pro-life cases making their way through North Carolina's court system.

With the help of our very capable friends over at alliance defending freedom will rejoin today by Denise Harley senior legal counsel with ADF which we know is one of the nation's preeminent law firms defending religious liberty. The sanctity of human life and marriage and family. Denise is working on both of the cases were discussing today Denise Harley.

Welcome to family policy matters to be document you will start with a case involving Planned Parenthood and the leaders of the Gen. assembly. What is Planned Parenthood challenging and on what grounds Carolina like eight had God protecting the health and safety of women undergoing abortion either. Common sense but have been on the books for a long time.

They've been upheld that the Supreme Court Planned Parenthood had brought a lawsuit challenging several of the including the requirement that abortion be performed by like addition or that when be told detailed information about the procedure before undergoing the procedure so it sort of the same tactic we see from incarnate all the time, which is that any regulation protecting the health and safety is something that gets in the way of the prophet so you and leaders of the legislature recently filed a motion to dismiss that lawsuit. Tell us your reasons for that motion. And where is it in the process, you will the big picture is that every woman deserves to know about her option in an unexpected pregnancy and North Carolina's blog protect women in that way, giving her information about alternatives to abortion on making sure that the facilities are properly equipped and sanitized and so the general assembly behind the plot, the state is required to protect the health and to give it that is not the plan.

Lawsuit, the state has moved to dismiss those challenges on the ground. First of all that all of those laws are completely common sense constitutional and similar to law that the Supreme Court has upheld and secondly not the place of Planned Parenthood to come in and pretend to speak for women. This would be like a construction company challenging the OSHA protection for workers. There are no women coming forward thing that they don't want the health and safety protections for themselves instead of the abortion industry and that the fox guarding the hen house Ryan, this is this is a problem because Planned Parenthood makes so much of its money doing abortions that tried and what they're asking for is exemption from protections for the patient that is, they wanted special exemption for things that we see across the medical industry. Anyone who undergoes medical procedures is given consent, and yet abortionists want to be able to avoid actually telling their patient details about the procedure and then getting their patient through content after understanding the nature of everything that goes on in the alternate and so that the motives behind these challenges and across the nation all the time so the case is this particular case is looking at several pro-life laws that have been on the books for several years.

At this point, is it reasonable to expect that at some point there might be an acceptance of certain pro-life laws that are properly passed by the legislature. Is that too much to hope for. Do you think it only seemed like the reverse because like you mentioned we had been on the books so real quick. At five so it's the requirement of license division perform abortions prohibition on telemedicine abortion. I think we understand given the dangers and risks of abortion, why that should be done virtually especially when an ultrasound is an important part of diagnosing how far along the pregnancy as the facility safety requirements like making sure that the hallways and elevators can accommodate gurneys proper ventilation system, sanitation, a 72 hour period that a woman had consider the informed consent information and then the actual informed consent information itself that these are all really important. Good thing when it who are considering abortion and yet now Planned Parenthood is saying, well, all of them saying if you add them up become too burdensome when in fact it's been decades since the Supreme Court initially upheld laws like this and so I think we see an emboldened approach by Planned Parenthood in the abortion industry. I'm not sure if that's because they found this before they felt like the Supreme Court was less favorable for them. I don't know where it's coming from but it actually seems to be a growing attack on basic protections for women and their babies and at the hearing that we had recently it was just coming to hear Planned Parenthood attorneys are giving that annotation requirement that North Carolina imposes upon hospital facilities and nursing home. For some reason shouldn't be required in abortion facilities.

A possible reason could there be have a healthcare facility performing risky invasive procedures and not me.

A thick annotation requirement had ventilation for some have hallways that can accommodate a stretcher.

In the event of an emergency in an emergency happened.

Neither the sort of thing there challenging and indicate that they have limits best interest at heart, and I think that's why they haven't found anyone to join him in the pocket.

Okay, let's turn to another North Carolina case that arose during the pandemic. When love life, ministry, members were arrested while peacefully, praying outside in abortion clinic. This case is interesting because it concerns constitutional issues related to speech assembly due process emergency government orders and enforcement all kinds of things could you give us an overview of what happened in this situation, sir.

So if you and Greensboro with love life ministry is a snapshot of what we had.

Now for over a year, with certain hostile government taking their pandemic power too far and for what happened in Greensboro would not about public health and safety without the government taking advantage of a crisis. The island, being great with what happened was some love life sidewalk counselors and part of the prayer team were out on a Saturday morning, praying outside of the abortion clinic on public property as they do every Saturday morning, there were fewer than 10 individuals. They were spaced out. They had hand sanitizer there following all of the pandemic requirement under the county ordinance in Guilford County and you know me well down the road. You've got Home Depot with the cars in the parking lot people going and now you have people inside the abortion clinic who knows how far if there's a fellow officer what they're doing but all around their people gathering having picnics exercise in it, and yet the sidewalk counselors were arrested for walking while praying and we do have for that we see that of the First Amendment violation because it will clearly be targeting behavioral want and that actions itself which are legal under the covert order but just because of the viewpoint and not unconstitutional.

So ultimately Greensboro dropped all of those charges. So why are we bringing up this lawsuit. Explain why that's important.

That's right Greensboro dropped all the criminal charges against my client, but the fact is there First Amendment freedom for free speech and religious freedom were violated, and that is really about a priceless right so they were arrested hauled to jail embarrassed inconvenience prevented from engaging in there First Amendment activity prevented from offering the three services that they were just there to help llamas in their babies and the daddy and yet they were deprived of that right in violation of the Constitution and so be a father of a lawsuit to have a court order that confirmed that that sort of viewpoint targeting by the government is unconstitutional and that these individuals were damaged by that several of them are pastors and we note some of them are foster parent and having an arrest on their record is embarrassing and it makes it look like they were not equal members of society. In fact they were out there following all of the guidance they were very respectful with all the law enforcement officers and yet still to this day.

The only people that are Police Department arrested during all of the pandemic for violating the sterile water were few volunteers for a nonprofit who were following all of the rules. Just because the mayor did not like their pro-life speech. People may not realize either that even though all the charges were dropped that that kind of thing can still follow an individual around here and are working right now to get those records expunged because we had one of the gentlemen was denied a permit to get a handgun.

Although other otherwise you are qualified but the fact that he had an arrest needed, like he was suspect individual.

Like I said one of the foster parents, foster father had to answer questions about it every time the people clicking on him and his family and several. The pastors had members of the congregation that he had a lot of questions rightfully quote you that someone arrested and then that they also had charges for resulting arrest, which is completely laughable.

We have the whole thing on videotape and there was they were peaceful and cooperative. The whole time that damages the reputation and the whole thing is born out of the hostility towards the pro-life viewpoint when the county was happy to let people walk down the sidewalk for any other purpose. But if you're walking on the sidewalk to pray against abortion that led to arrest indicating all that just completely against what the Constitution says that we will entitled to as American citizens somewhat connection, if any, do you see between these cases. We certainly see environmental hostility pro-life you that there are people in government and in a very wealthy abortion industry that will continually try to impose their viewpoint on the rest of America and they will even do it by trying to use the force of the law and the courts to try to stamp out pro-life views and try to impose abortion upon all American and it's unfortunate that we have to litigate the but I'm hopeful and thankful that our Constitution is robust and that we ultimately will prevail on this. Thank you for your good work. We are very grateful for all that you that you do over there at ADS were just about at a time before we go Denise Harley working listeners go if they want to follow these cases and all of the good work that you guys are doing over there at alliance defending freedom, we be happy fearless nurse to check out our website@alegal.org transfer alliance defending freedom.

There you can read about all of our cases, there is a lot going on right now in on the religious liberty front and on the pro-life front and you can also sign up for our alliance alert, which is the email that we The breaking news talk cases and beer drinkers that you can also support our work. We do all of our litigation pro bono. We could depend on like-minded citizens across America to link arms with us and help us to fight these battles would really encourage our listeners as well to take a look at what ADF does, because quite often in mainstream media. Even conservative websites. We hear a lot about what is considered to be violations of our freedoms. If you want to see true violations of our constitutional rights. Go see what's going on and what ADF is, is battling because it's just it's it's amazing the kinds of things that are that are happening that often don't get mentioned in the mainstream media so Denise Harley senior legal counsel with alliance defending freedom. Thank you so much for being with us here on family policy matters. Taking you been listening to family policy matters. We hope you enjoyed the program employment to them again next week to listen to the show on loan and to learn more about NC families work to inform, encourage and inspire families across been through a lot of good or website it into family.award that's into family.org books again for listening and may God bless you and your family