Senate Bill 300, approved by Delaware lawmakers in 2024, targeted what it called "limited services" medical facilities—centers offering pregnancy-related help that are not licensed by the state. The law required these centers to display notices, both on-site and in all advertising, stating that they are "not licensed as a medical facility by the state of Delaware" and have no licensed medical provider directly supervising services. Pro-life advocates said the law was written to shame and discourage women from walking through the doors of centers that offer free ultrasounds, diapers, counseling, and material support to mothers in crisis.
A federal judge had already halted enforcement of the law temporarily one month after the lawsuit was filed. Friday's order makes that halt permanent. As part of the settlement, Jennings's office agreed to pay Alliance Defending Freedom $50,000 in attorneys' fees and costs, even as the state continues to dispute the pregnancy centers' claim that the law violated the First Amendment.
Attorneys for the centers argued the case fell squarely under a 2018 Supreme Court precedent, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, in which the justices struck down a similar California law compelling pregnancy centers to advertise the availability of state-funded abortion. That precedent has become the shield pro-life centers across the country now carry into statehouses and courtrooms whenever officials try to force them to carry a message that undermines their mission.
When the State Tells You What to Say
Now here is the plain trouble with a law like Delaware's. It did not simply regulate a business. It reached into a room where a frightened young woman sits across from a volunteer, and it told that volunteer what she must say before she is allowed to say anything else. That is a different order of wrong than a zoning dispute or a licensing fee. That is the state putting words in the mouths of people who never asked the government's permission to love their neighbor.
My friend, there has always been a temptation among the powerful to control not just what people do, but what they are permitted to say about what they do. Scripture does not treat speech lightly. Words carry weight before the Lord, and He does not look kindly on those who twist truth into a weapon against the weak.
"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20)
That is precisely the pattern here. A center that hands a scared young mother a free sonogram picture, that sits with her at two in the morning when she cannot sleep for worry, that helps her find a crib and a job and a church family—that is called out for a disclaimer, while the industry that ends the child's life inside her is treated as the trustworthy institution. Isaiah saw that inversion three thousand years ago, and it has not stopped happening since.
There is a second thing worth saying plainly. The Ninth Commandment forbids bearing false witness, but it also implies a positive duty: God's people are not to be silenced when they tell the truth, and no earthly government has the authority to compel a citizen to speak against her own convictions.
The pregnancy centers of Delaware did not ask for a fight. They asked only to keep helping women without a bureaucrat's script taped to the wall. That the state backed down, and paid for the privilege of having tried, is a mercy worth noticing. It will not be the last such fight in this country, and it should not need to be. Wherever a government official is tempted to punish mercy for competing with an industry it prefers, the church has a plain word to offer, spoken not in anger but in love for both mother and child: the truth does not need the state's permission, and it will outlast every law written against it.
Whoever reads this and works in one of these centers, whoever has walked through one of those doors carrying a fear no one else could see—know that the door was opened by people answering a call higher than any statute. That call has not changed, and it is not going anywhere.