Right to Life League Sued; Woman Claims Deception

The Right to Life League of Southern California was accused Tuesday of operating clinics and practicing medicine without licenses and deceptively advertising anti-abortion lectures as “pregnancy counseling.”

The charges, made on the 12th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision legalizing abortion, were contained in a civil suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by attorney Gloria Allred on behalf of Shanti Friend, 25, and the general public.

Frank Forve, league executive director, said the group will not comment on the accusations until its attorneys can review the lawsuit.

Friend, according to the suit, was attracted to the group’s Pregnancy Counseling Center South Bay in Torrance last Sept. 29 because of an advertisement in the Yellow Pages offering “free pregnancy testing and counseling.”

The woman claimed that her requests for the pregnancy test were ignored and that she received no counseling about birth control or abortion.

Instead, the suit states, she was continually shown pictures of mutilated and normal fetuses, told “horror stories” about women who died during abortions and told that an abortion could cause her subsequently to miscarry or to have premature babies.

Allred claimed that the center operated as a community clinic but lacked the license required by the California Clinic Act, which she said was an unlawful business practice. She claimed that center personnel, by offering authoritative advice on the implications of abortion, were essentially practicing medicine without a license in violation of the California Medical Practices Act.

The Yellow Pages ad, plus promotional brochures, were misleading and deceptive, the attorney claimed, because they promised “pregnancy counseling” when the intent was “not to counsel but to intimidate, shock, horrify and frighten women into avoiding abortion.”

The suit, which seeks no monetary damages for Friend’s alleged emotional distress, requests court orders forcing the centers to disclose their anti-abortion philosophy and affiliation with the Right to Life League and to obtain licenses to operate as clinics and to practice medicine if warranted.

Although the league has 22 such clinics in Southern California, Allred said she sued only the one visited by Friend, because a judge’s orders concerning a single clinic would establish guidelines for all of them.

“These practices and tactics take advantage of young women at the most vulnerable times in their lives,” Allred said, reasserting her own support of safe, legal abortions. “That’s when they are single and fear they are pregnant. We think women are entitled to the truth about abortion.”