Abortion ‘Reversal’ Free Speech Suit Comes Before Second Circuit

Anti-abortion groups and reproductive rights advocates alike will be closely watching oral arguments in a federal appeals court Tuesday over an order blocking New York from suing groups that tout abortion “reversal.”

The case is “vitally important—one that strikes at the heart of the First Amendment and the rights of pro-life pregnancy centers,” said American Center for Law & Justice senior counsel Olivia Summers.

But the “state and the federal governments are free to regulate unfair or deceptive trade practices, and this case falls comfortably within that authority,” said Molly Meegan, chief legal office for the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists.

A panel of US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit judges will confront an important issue in the nationwide abortion debate: whether states can use consumer protection and false advertising laws to cabin speech they say is inherently misleading and potentially harmful about a medical procedure in which pregnant people take the female hormone progesterone to halt a pill-induced abortion and continue a pregnancy.

The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, a Virginia-based umbrella association that provides legal assistance to anti-abortion clinics and medical centers throughout the country, and several western New York-based pregnancy centers sued New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) in May 2024, saying saying her state-court lawsuit against other anti-abortion pregnancy centers had chilled their speech about abortion alternatives.

NIFLA and the centers weren’t involved in that case.

The US District Court for the Western District of New York halted the state’s potential action against these defendants in August 2024, saying they were likely to win on their claims that potential future litigation intended to halt their advocacy for abortion-pill reversal treatment threatens their First Amendment free speech rights.

The Second Circuit’s ultimate decision won’t be binding outside New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. But it “may be persuasive” in similar cases pending elsewhere in the US, Life Legal Defense Foundation chief legal officer Catherine Short said.

The argument, scheduled exactly three years after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization held that there’s no right to an abortion under the US Constitution, comes at a time when conservative lawmakers are pushing to eliminate abortion nationwide while reproductive rights groups are working to salvage what’s left of the right to end a pregnancy.

Broader Trend

The case is part of a broader trend in which officials in left-leaning states such as Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California have taken steps to prevent anti-abortion medical centers from promoting speech the states say is false and misleads consumers to believe that pill-induced abortions can be halted.

Short says what they’re really trying to do is “suppress pro-life viewpoints.”

The states’ “efforts don’t protect women—they silence one side of a critical medical and moral conversation,” she said.

Instead of promoting “honest medical debate,” state governments are trying to halt the speech in favor of their “preferred narrative,” ACLJ’s Summers said. “If the government can silence pro-life viewpoints under the pretense of ‘protecting consumers,’ no controversial speech is safe,” she added.

ACOG’s Meegan disagreed, saying these cases are “properly understood as attempts to cloak the right to recommend medical treatments that are not proven and present risks to the patients in the language of freedom of speech.”

These anti-abortion facilities “represent themselvesas legitimate reproductive health care clinics providing care for pregnant people, but actually aim to dissuade people from accessing certain types of reproductive health care, including abortion care,” Meegan said.

They typically don’t provide “actual medical services or unbiased information about medical risks, benefits, and available treatments,” she said.

There’s no data showing that “so-called ‘abortion reversal’ is an effective medical treatment or that women are actually seeking such care from these clinics,” she added.

“Pregnant people deserve access to accurate and unbiased information when making personal decisions,” said Amy Williams Navarro, government relations director for Reproductive Freedom for All, which will be monitoring this and similar cases.

New York hasn’t brought any civil enforcement actions against the plaintiffs in this suit but has sued other, similarly situated groups. Just the threat of facing such an action has chilled the plaintiffs’ speech, they said.

Caroline Lindsay of the Alliance Defending Freedom, who will argue for the plaintiffs, criticized James for “censoring pro-life pregnancy centers from sharing information about life-saving care that is both safe and effective.”

Judges Joseph F. Bianco, Eunice C. Lee, and Alison J. Nathan will hear the arguments.

Jonathan Hitsous of the New York’s Attorney General’s Office is set to argue for James. Her office didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.

The case is Nat’l Inst. of Family & Life Advocs. v. James, 2d Cir., No. 24-2481, oral arguments scheduled 6/24/25.