A licensed medical clinic spends more than two decades quietly serving women facing unplanned pregnancies—offering free ultrasounds, counseling, and compassionate care rooted in Christian conviction. Then the state comes knocking. Not with gratitude. With subpoenas.
That’s what happened to Your Options Medical Centers in Massachusetts. And now, the American Center for Law and Justice is taking their fight to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit—in A Woman’s Concern, Inc. d/b/a Your Options Medical Centers v. Healey—with a remarkable coalition of nearly 30 organizations standing alongside them in this critical case.
Your Options Medical didn’t change. It didn’t violate any law. It simply continued operating from a pro-life, Christian worldview—and that was enough to make it a target. Massachusetts branded it a “fake clinic,” buried it in government subpoenas, and funded a taxpayer-financed advertising campaign designed to discredit it. When the district court dismissed the case, the ACLJ appealed. Now, at the First Circuit, the stakes couldn’t be higher: not just for one clinic in Massachusetts, but for every American’s right to speak, believe, and serve according to their conscience.
An Extraordinary Show of Support
The ACLJ is not fighting alone. An extraordinary coalition has filed friend-of-the-court (amicus curiae) briefs in support of reversal—organizations that didn’t have to get involved, but chose to. Their message to Massachusetts and every official watching is unmistakable: The pro-life movement will not be intimidated into silence.
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Among the coalition members, the amicus briefs from these organizations stood out:
40 Days for Life, a prayer and sidewalk counseling ministry, argues that Massachusetts’ campaign coerces pro-life speech far beyond any single clinic and that robust constitutional protection for free speech and religious freedom is essential.
Heartbeat International, which supports pregnancy help centers, maternity homes, and adoption agencies worldwide, contends that what happened to Your Options Medical is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of government pressure targeting these ministries.
Life Legal Defense Foundation, which has represented Pregnancy Resource Centers facing state subpoenas, argues that Your Options Medical was treated differently from other licensed facilities and that the state’s justifications fall apart at even the pleading stage.
Perhaps most striking is the brief filed by Advancing American Freedom (AAF)—on behalf of its 161,715 members—which assembled a coalition of nearly 30 organizations united behind a single constitutional principle: Government cannot do indirectly what the Constitution forbids it from doing directly.
Christians and Jews. Men and women. National advocacy groups and state coalitions. Even Democrats for Life is standing alongside conservative organizations. Their brief draws on a deep well of precedent from Brown v. Board of Education to NAACP v. Alabama. It argues that freedom of association for pregnancy centers and their supporters is squarely at risk.
Why It Matters
These amicus briefs are more than legal filings—they are a declaration. When the state can brand a pro-life ministry “dangerous,” bury it in subpoenas, and fund a campaign to drive it out of existence, no American’s freedom of speech, religion, or association is safe.
To every organization and leader in this coalition: Thank you for refusing to look away.
At the ACLJ, we will keep fighting this case to the finish line. With allies like these beside us, we are more confident than ever that the First Amendment will prevail—and that life will be defended.
Join us as we defend pro-life centers. Sign the petition: Defeat Pro-Life Center Deception.
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