(LifeSiteNews) — A Massachusetts city council last week finally shot down a proposed ordinance to regulate pro-life pregnancy centers after more than a year of debate.
On October 18, Worcester city councilors voted 7-4 against the measure that would have enabled the government to penalize the pro-life centers for allegedly misleading pregnant mothers by advertising reproductive health services while intentionally directing moms away from killing their preborn babies.
Pro-abortion advocates frequently make the inaccurate claim that pro-life pregnancy centers, which provide pregnant mothers with valuable assistance including ultrasounds, formula, diapers, strollers, and counseling, are “fake” and “dangerous” because they don’t promote abortion.
Councilors had already apparently dropped the proposal in July, but last week’s vote put the final nail in the coffin for the measure.
READ: Massachusetts city drops ordinance to force pregnancy centers to provide abortion referrals
GBH News reported that councilors ultimately opted to scrap the proposal over concerns that the crackdown would trigger first amendment lawsuits too financially detrimental to the already cash-strapped city.
“I’m too concerned about the unintended consequences of going too far and trying to push them on the municipal level,” Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty said during an October 18 City Council meeting, GBH reported. “At a time when the city residents are seeing increases with inflation, gas prices, electricity and taxes, I cannot subject [the city] to any more litigation that causes any more financial anguish.”
The measure, sponsored by Planned Parenthood-endorsed “non-binary” City Councilor Thu Nguyen, had been a subject of debate by the city council for some 15 months, Catholic Action League noted in a Thursday press release.
By this summer, the proposal had drawn pushback from city solicitor Michael Traynor and city manager Eric Batista, who had originally been tapped by Nguyen to draft the proposal. Batista’s office confirmed that it had been advised by the Massachusetts Attorney General not to proceed with the ordinance.
“The city solicitor spoke with a representative in the Attorney General’s office who informed the solicitor that they were not recommending municipalities act for a variety of reasons,” Batista’s office said in a statement, Patch.com reported.
In the Thursday press release, Catholic Action League executive director C.J. Doyle said the vote was “a victory for human life, religious freedom and constitutional government” and pointed out that “its proximate cause was a cold and calculated appreciation of the legal liabilities, and consequent fiscal burdens, that the City of Worcester and its taxpayers would have to bear defending this untenable and extremist legislation in court.”
READ: Marjorie Taylor Greene accuses FBI of targeting Catholics while ignoring pro-abortion extremists
He argued that the Massachusetts Family Institute likely “contributed to the more reasonable frame of mind that the council majority eventually settled upon” through “threatening a lawsuit against Worcester,” presenting “a lesson to be learned here for the pro-life movement.”
“While the Legislature, the Constitutional Officers and the congressional delegation may be wholly owned subsidiaries of Planned Parenthood, the tentacles of the abortion industry do not seem to reach down as deeply and completely into the political lives of local elected officials,” he said.
For Doyle, the October 18 vote to shoot down the proposal means “the pro-life movement may still have room to maneuver in the corridors of municipal government in Massachusetts.”