California Assembly Passes Bill Requiring Pregnancy Centers to Lie Less

The California Assembly has passed AB 775, the Reproductive FACT Act, which will make it harder for crisis pregnancy centers to actively mislead their clients. The act requires that CPCs post notices disclosing that they don’t have medical licenses; licensed medical facilities will post notices that California has public programs to help pay for family planning services, prenatal care and abortion.

Anti-abortion groups are grumbling that the bill requires them to “promote” abortion, as Breitbart put it. But the fun thing about laws is that they’re publicly available for everyone to read; the full text of the bill is here, and it makes it quite clear that crisis pregnancy centers without medical licenses—the vast, vast majority of them—simply have to disclose that fact:

Unlicensed facilities that advertise and provide pregnancy testing and care must advise clients, at the time they are seeking or obtaining care, that these facilities are not licensed to provide medical care.

It seems fairly basic that non-medical facilities should have to disclose that they’re not medical facilities. The bill is now heading to the Senate, where it will be heard in committee by June 8.

In the meantime, Assembly Member Autumn R. Burke, who’s co-sponsoring the bill, continues to reply to its critics by politely pointing out that they’re a bunch of lying liars; in a radio interview this week, she told Capital Public Radio that even the names of the CPCs tend to be misleading: “When they have titles like Pregnancies Alternatives, [clients] believe they are going to be given all of the alternatives.” It’s almost like the entire purpose is to be misleading.

Image via Assembly Member Autumn R. Burke/Facebook.