The Supremes ‘Choose Life’      12/11/2002
Court refuses to review case challenging pro-life slogan on license plates
By Tanya L. Green, J.D.

Government may prefer childbirth over abortion

By refusing to review the decision of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively shut down the efforts of abortion advocates bent on prohibiting Louisiana from offering its motorists license plates bearing the slogan, “Choose Life.”

“The principle that government may express a preference for childbirth over abortion is well established in law, even since Roe v. Wade,” said Concerned Women for America’s Vice President for Government Relations Michael Schwartz. “One example is the decision in McRae v. Harris (1980), in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment, barring most federal funding of abortion through Medicaid.”

“This a double win, in that 'Choose Life' license plates are a wonderful way to send a positive message and help children,” added CWA’s Senior Policy Director Wendy Wright. “Thank goodness the court is allowing people to spend their own money to express what they believe.”

CWA became involved in this case because the law that created the license plates also established a Choose Life Advisory Council. Original membership of that council included two CWA members, prompting abortion advocates to depose CWA Chief Financial Officer Lee LaHaye and others in their attempts to overturn this law. The council is charged with reviewing applications for the funds collected by the sale of the plates, and recommending possible recipients to the state treasurer. By law, those organizations must be adoption-promoting groups like adoption agencies or crisis pregnancy centers.

Planned Parenthood of Louisiana sought to stop the specialty plates through the courts, arguing that the state gave a forum only to pro-life views. In March 2002, the appeals court dismissed the group’s challenge to the license plates, saying it lacked standing to sue the state because the law would neither adversely nor directly affect the group.

The appeals court also lifted an injunction that barred Louisiana from making “Choose Life” license plates available for an extra fee. Motorists pay $25 a year for the specialty plates in addition to the regular license fee. Those funds are then distributed to groups that promote adoption instead of abortion.

Kathleen Benfield, then a member of CWA of Louisiana’s steering committee, initiated the legislation that created the specialty plates and also worked with the Department of Motor Vehicles on the design of the plates.

“[Pro-abortion forces] are challenging the distribution of the money [from plate sales] and arguing that groups such as Planned Parenthood should be able to receive the money—and that it’s discriminatory not to allow the money to go to Planned Parenthood,” said Benfield, according to the Traditional Values Coalition Web site. The Web site also says Benfield is now the director of the American Family Association of New Orleans.

Meanwhile, a similar controversy is brewing in Oklahoma. The state will soon offer its drivers a specialty tag that promotes adoption. Critics say such a message doesn’t belong on state license plates, and that the state has no right to support adoption over abortion.

“To pick one over the other is to limit freedom of speech in this country and that’s against the [U.S.] Constitution,” Nancy Kachel of Planned Parenthood told NewsChannel 8 News.

Tony Lauinger of Oklahomans for Life disagrees.

“Many women are pressured to get abortions and we want to encourage society to love both the pregnant woman and her unborn child,” Lauinger said. “The government has every right to encourage life and to encourage people to protect innocent human life and to encourage society to protect the life of the unborn child.”

To date, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina have passed laws permitting the sale of pro-life specialty license plates.

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