An international pro-life group is offering to cover legal fees for activists who clash with a new New Jersey law restricting protests near abortion facilities.
40 Days For Life, which runs nine annual vigils in New Jersey with an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 participants, announced the legal-defense pledge after Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed S2260/A2218 into law last week. The legislation imposes criminal penalties on those who “injure, threaten, intimidate, or physically block patients or providers,” or damage property related to “reproductive healthcare services,” according to a press release from the governor’s office.
The group’s CEO, Shawn Carney, raised concerns that vague language about intimidation and threats could be stretched to target peaceful protesters. “Prayer is not a crime. Holding a sign is not intimidation. Offering a woman help is not coercion,” Carney told The Post. “This law is designed to scare people of faith off the sidewalks outside abortion facilities by creating the constant threat of prosecution and costly lawsuits.”
Carney continued his defiant message in the same interview. “We will not be intimidated,” he said. “If the state tries to weaponize this law against constitutionally protected speech, our Institute of Law & Justice will be there to defend them at no cost.”
The group’s legal arm, the Institute of Law & Justice, plans to cover both civil and criminal litigation for activists who qualify. Carney stressed that protesters must have been engaged in peaceful activity to receive the group’s legal support.
Sherrill’s office pushed back against claims that the law targets prayer or peaceful protest. “Of course peaceful prayer is protected,” the governor’s spokesperson Steve Sigmund told The Post. “This legislation protects patients and providers from threats to their safety, and defends the fundamental freedom to make personal healthcare decisions without fear or intimidation.”
Sigmund added a clarification about the law’s scope in his statement to the outlet. “Nothing in this law prevents lawful, peaceful protest or the exercise of constitutionally protected speech,” he said. “What is not protected is violence, threats, intimidation, physical obstruction, or property damage intended to interfere with someone receiving or providing reproductive healthcare.”
The law also expanded New Jersey’s shield law to restrict state facilities from cooperating with out-of-state investigations into residents who violate other states’ laws on transgender surgeries. That builds on the Garden State’s existing shield law for abortion.
New Jersey is one of 10 states plus Washington, D.C. That impose no gestational limit on abortion at any stage of pregnancy. Massachusetts recently joined that group by eliminating its restrictions on abortion past 24 weeks of gestation, roughly the point at which most unborn babies can survive outside the womb.
Nearly 93 percent of abortions are performed within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to 2022 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
