Elizabeth Barrett, a young college dropout in Southern California, swallowed a pill the local abortion clinic had given her — and then, almost immediately after, changed her mind. An online search for advice on how to undo the chemical abortion led her to Heartbeat International, a Christian nonprofit that refers women to licensed doctors for treatment. It worked. Ms. Barrett is the mother of a healthy girl.

The state of California wants to be sure that such things never happen again. In an extraordinary case now unfolding at trial in state court in Oakland, California’s attorney general seeks an injunction and up to $20 million in fines against Heartbeat International and another small pro-life Christian nonprofit, RealOptions. Their offense is telling women who regret swallowing the abortion pill that there is a medical treatment that can sometimes save their babies.

Consumer fraud, the prosecutors are calling it. Legal scholars call it an abuse of power. “This novel use of California’s commercial-fraud statute seems designed to intimidate nonprofit organizations that—with no hope of commercial gain — seek to educate the public about services that are lawful but contrary to the ideological preferences of the government,” says Michael McConnell, a professor who teaches free-speech law at Stanford.

California isn’t alone in attacking these Christian groups. New York’s Attorney General Letitia James has filed a similar lawsuit against Heartbeat International and other pregnancy centers. The Thomas More Society, a Catholic public-interest law firm, is pursuing separate federal cases challenging the constitutionality of these prosecutions in federal courts.

California’s attorney general has found no evidence that any woman has complained of harm by the defendants. That didn’t dissuade the state, which is marshaling its taxpayer-funded resources to shut these ministries down.

The state argues that because the nonprofits raise money from donors, they are engaged in commercial speech. If the government wins, doctors may still prescribe the medication, but no nonprofit can tell women the treatment exists—a novel legal theory that would vastly expand lawfare against those who hold views with which the government disagrees.

One wonders whether the pro-abortion lobby has really thought this through. The prosecution’s theory “would expose any nonprofit in America” to “the same government overreach,” Paul Jonna, an attorney from the Thomas More Society, said in a news release. Don’t they worry that some future state attorney general in Mississippi might use similar tactics to go after Planned Parenthood?

Reading the depositions of these women is a painful experience. To be a Catholic priest these days, as we both are, is to have heard many similar stories of women who felt pressured to have an abortion they didn’t want.

Everyone should oppose this. But these women especially need support from the religious — those who hold that creation in God’s image means life is endowed with a dignity that can’t be trampled by a government determined to punish those who oppose unquestioned abortion.

Consider just the case of Ms. Barrett. In 2023, she was struggling financially, and she and her live-in boyfriend were experiencing increasing strain in their relationship. When she learned she was pregnant, “I panicked at the thought of spending 18 years in family court,” Ms. Barrett testified. She “struggled to imagine where I would be able to find funds to cover child-care costs.”

At the clinic, she told staff she was scared and thought she might want to keep her baby, hoping to talk through her options. “I was a huge supporter and donor to Planned Parenthood at the time,” she said. “I thought for sure that staff at the clinic would help me out.” Instead they urged her to take the abortion pill that day and warned that if she delayed, she might not be able to get another appointment. “With that scheduling pressure and overwhelmed by misgivings about getting the abortion — what if I wanted to proceed but couldn’t later? — I took the first of two pills for a chemical abortion.”

But before she left the clinic, her boyfriend texted her saying he wanted to keep the baby and raise their child together. That changed everything. So began a frantic search for anything to stop the abortion: “I was desperate, borderline hysterical, and willing to try just about anything.” Ms. Barrett found Heartbeat International online. Within an hour, she had a clinic appointment with a licensed California doctor to reverse her abortion pill. She’s a mother today thanks to this Christian nonprofit and its donors.

California v. Heartbeat International and RealOptions is a rare case that should bring together both sides of the abortion debate. In particular, it tests the souls of those who claim the platform of “pro-choice.” What kind of people see a pregnant woman who wants to reverse the effects of an abortion pill and think, “Let’s punish the nonprofits that informed her she has a choice”?

Are they really pro-choice, or do they just like killing?

By Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, archbishop of San Francisco, and Bishop Michael Barber, bishop of Oakland, in the Wall Street Journal