Pro-Abortionists Continue to Fight "Choose Life" License Plates

By Liz Townsend

While counties in Florida are starting to distribute to adoption organizations money collected from the sale of special "Choose Life" license plates, a federal appeals court is deciding whether to allow the plates to be sold in Louisiana and a federal lawsuit has been filed to stop their sale in South Carolina.

These states are the first three to pass laws authorizing such specialty license plates, which cost car owners about $20-35 more than the usual fee each year. In Florida and Louisiana, the extra money collected is earmarked for adoption groups, and in South Carolina, crisis pregnancy centers will receive the funds.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed the first bill establishing the license plate in 1999, which features the "Choose Life" slogan and a child-like drawing of a boy and a girl. Pro-abortion groups tried to stop the plates' distribution through a lawsuit, but they went on sale in August 2000 after a judge rejected the pro- abortion arguments, according to Florida Today.

Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman Bob Sanchez told Florida Today that sales throughout the state totaled $427,600 during the first year. Each individual Florida county administers the funds collected in its jurisdiction.

For example, Brevard County commissioners decided August 28 to give the $15,538 collected in the county to Pregnancy Resources of Melbourne, Florida Today reported. Pregnancy Resources is a " coalition of pro-life and adoption counseling agencies," according to Florida Today.

Attorneys for the state of Louisiana faced off against lawyers from the New York-based Center for Reproductive Law and Policy before a federal appeals court panel August 8, arguing whether Louisiana's "Choose Life" plate could be sold, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate. The license plate, which features the slogan and a drawing of a baby wrapped in a blanket in the beak of the state bird, a pelican, was unanimously approved by the legislature in 1999.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval, Jr., stopped the sale of the license plates in August 2000. Duval said the "Choose Life" slogan "is very likely an unconstitutional restraint of free speech as it restricts the forum to only one view - - that being the view of the state," the Advocate reported.

State attorneys argued before the appeals court that the Louisiana legislature has the right to include any slogan it chooses on license plates. "Even Sportsman's Paradise [the slogan on the bottom of Louisiana's regular license plates] is offensive to some people," Assistant Attorney General Roy Mongrue, Jr., told the court, according to the Advocate.

The appeals court panel has not announced when it will issue its decision.

South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges signed the bill that authorized his state's "Choose Life" license plate into law September 2. The " Choose Life" provision was attached to a bill creating a NASCAR specialty plate, which funds emergency children's shelters, according to The State.

Planned Parenthood of South Carolina filed a federal lawsuit September 4 challenging the "Choose Life" plate, asserting that it violates free speech and equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution, The State reported.

Republican gubernatorial candidates Attorney General Charlie Condon and Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler both defended the state's right to offer the license plate.

"You do disservice to the message 'choose life' if you say it is simply a slogan in a legal and political debate," Condon spokesman Rob McBurney told The State. Peeler called the lawsuit "outrageous," saying, "Planned Parenthood has proven they are for all kinds of choices, just so those choices don't include life."

Choose Life, Inc., an organization that began in Florida and now advocates for the adoption of the license plates nationwide, states on its web site that pro- lifers in 35 states have contacted the group seeking advice on how to begin the "Choose Life" campaign.

"This year 'Choose Life' license plate bills went before the legislatures of California, Texas, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, West Virginia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Michigan, and Ohio," the group writes on its web site. "We believe 'Choose Life' is an idea for America, not just Florida ... to facilitate and encourage adoption as a positive choice for women with unplanned pregnancies."