With Roe overturned, some states are rushing to criminalize not only abortion — but 𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 about abortion.
Here’s what you need to know. 🧵
Here’s what you need to know. 🧵
2/ Legislators in South Carolina wasted no time introducing a bill that would make it a 𝗙𝗘𝗟𝗢𝗡𝗬 to “knowingly or intentionally aid, abet, or conspire” with another person to obtain an abortion.
3/ In other words, sharing information about obtaining an abortion — even, seemingly, a legal abortion in another state — with the knowledge that such information might be put to use 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐥.
4/ The bill can be read to criminalize speech even beyond South Carolina’s borders.
The following would become grounds for prosecution:
🤐 Closed-door discussions between partners
🤐 TikTok posts
🤐 Consultations with medical professionals
🤐 Checking out library books
The following would become grounds for prosecution:
🤐 Closed-door discussions between partners
🤐 TikTok posts
🤐 Consultations with medical professionals
🤐 Checking out library books
5/ The bill’s vagueness is equally alarming.
Is a celeb’s tweet about abortion to her many followers “purposefully directed” at the SC residents among them?
Has a national mag with SC subscribers that publishes an article about self-administered abortions violated the law?
Is a celeb’s tweet about abortion to her many followers “purposefully directed” at the SC residents among them?
Has a national mag with SC subscribers that publishes an article about self-administered abortions violated the law?
6/ The chill on abortion-related speech that would follow isn’t an unintended side effect. It’s the deliberate aim.
7/ This won’t end with South Carolina. The National Right to Life Committee is promoting model legislation with similar provisions.
8/ Sooner or later, "aiding and abetting" prohibitions will be enacted into law and challenged in court.
They should be struck down under the First Amendment.
They should be struck down under the First Amendment.
9/ 
10/ Our democracy must not empower states to broadly police and prosecute their residents for personal, political, and medical discussions.
11/ All Americans should recognize the danger of broad grants of power to government censors to regulate abortion-related speech.
As Justice Thomas noted in 2018:
As Justice Thomas noted in 2018:
12/ Even on the hypothetical assumption that speech about abortion could be barred in a state where abortion is illegal, such a bar could not extend to states where abortion remains legal. (See 1975’s Bigelow v. Virginia.)
thefire.org/first-amendmen…
thefire.org/first-amendmen…
13/ In Bigelow, the Court declared that if the restriction were upheld, Virginia and other states would be empowered to censor “a wide variety of national publications or interstate newspapers” carrying articles or ads dealing with abortion ... 👉directly at odds with the #1A.
14/ Since Bigelow, the Court has even more strongly upheld freedom to advertise services & products, with some of the very same conservative Justices who overturned Roe consistently arguing that such speech should receive the same robust #1amd protection as political advocacy.
15/ These Justices should not now alter the fundamental free speech principles at stake in the abortion context.
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