Calif. stops prosecuting pro-lifer, still tries to cripple groups promoting abortion 'reversal'

Imagining a Planned Parenthood volunteer's mindset nearly cost a pro-life activist her freedom. Promoting a protocol that can allegedly reverse abortion pills could still cost a network of pregnancy centers $20 million.

Anastasia Rogers avoided a second jury trial scheduled to start this week after the first jury rejected San Francisco prosecutors' argument that she threatened a so-called clinic escort, who blocks pro-life activists from talking to women entering the abortion facility, in an unflattering social media post described by KQED as a "meme." 

She had been charged under California's version of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, whose federal version has been used almost exclusively against pro-life activists since it took effect 32 years ago, despite also applying to abortion supporters' threats and vandalism against pregnancy centers and churches.

Rogers' lawyers at Life Legal Defense Foundation said her case is set to be dismissed Sept. 23 under an agreement with prosecutors, "as long as she complies with the court’s terms and obeys all laws during that time." 

The court also ended a protective order stopping her from visiting the escort's clinic with her group Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, which said Rogers is now only prohibited from coming within 100 feet of the escort herself.

The unorthodox activist, who credits veganism and animal rights activism with kindling her interest in pro-life "direct action" and her fellow activists with leading her to Christianity from atheism, returned to the San Francisco Planned Parenthood to practice so-called sidewalk counseling for the first time in three months last week.

Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, some of whose members were pardoned by President Trump for federal FACE Act convictions, said Rogers is also known for her activism with animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere and climate action group Declare Emergency.

California has a recent history of trying to punish meme-makers. Shortly before the 2024 election, a federal judge blocked its law against election deepfakes as a likely First Amendment violation and state Attorney General Rob Bonta agreed the Golden State can't enforce the law against the Christian satire site The Babylon Bee.

Bonta is hoping Heartbeat International is an easier target for silencing, in an Alameda County Superior Court bench trial that coincidentally started last week on the anniversary of Dobbs, the Supreme Court decision that ended federal abortion rights. 

The AG argues the pregnancy center network violated California's false advertising and unfair competition laws by telling women that taking supplemental progesterone, a natural pregnancy hormone, soon after taking mifepristone may prevent the abortion pill from working.

He's seeking the maximum $2,500 penalty under each law for each woman who called Heartbeat's "abortion pill reversal" hotline, even the seven women who will testify at trial that APR saved their pregnancies, Heartbeat Vice President of Communications Andrea Trudden told Just the News on Friday.

Heartbeat general counsel Danielle White said: "A ruling in California's favor would hand attorneys general across the country a roadmap to penalize any non-profit organization that provides women with information the state disagrees with." 

Heartbeat's lawyer Paul Jonna of the Thomas More Society said in his opening statement Wednesday: "Here’s the one inconvenient fact for the attorney general that frames everything the Court will hear in this trial. 

"The attorney general investigated these defendants, then took years of discovery. And after all of it, he has not produced a single complaint from a single patient."

The trial is scheduled to run through July in half-day sessions four days a week, and could go longer given that the schedule has already changed three times, according to Trudden. Heartbeat only got about 20-30 minutes of cross-examination of Bonta's expert witness in the trial's first two days, dominated by the AG's efforts to discredit APR, she said.

A long-awaited 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in another pregnancy center network's challenge to California's ban on promoting APR could end Heartbeat's case as well, Trudden said. She emphasized the state doesn't ban the protocol itself, unlike Colorado's failed attempt at a ban.

District attorney allegedly rebranded TikTok meme as threat

Planned Parenthood escort Sarah Gentile reported Rogers to the district attorney's office for depicting her in a September social media video that "uses a format common on TikTok," in which a person "reaches toward the camera as if offering a handshake before it cuts to a punchline or reveal," the San Francisco Public Press reported on the eve of trial.

The 14-second Instagram reel used the caption "Unalive them with kindness" with Rogers' handshake gesture, the Press said. The caption for the clinic escort is "Unalive them," which Life Legal said referred to abortions killing unborn children and sometimes women, not a threat to Gentile. ("Unalive" is used in place of "kill" to avoid content moderation.)

Rogers deleted the post as a condition of her new agreement with prosecutors, and Just the News has not been able to find it posted elsewhere.

The case started inauspiciously in March for Rogers, whose lawyers said the judge gave them only a minute to argue to dismiss the charges before trial, preemptively decided her post wasn't protected speech, ordered her to stay 150 feet from the clinic rather than just Gentile, and refused to watch the video, which shows Rogers "participating in an online trend."

The jury found 10-2 that Rogers was not guilty, according to Life Legal, while the media simply said jurors weren't "unanimous." Her lawyer, Michael Millen, told KQED that he believes San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins sought a new trial because of "political overtones."

The case record for the trial doesn't provide the documents themselves, just short descriptions. An order dated June 23 says "Criminal Proceedings Suspended" and Rogers granted "misdemeanor diversion," without indicating why Jenkins agreed to diversion. The Public Press said her office hasn't explained why either.

The penal code section requires a judge who has approved misdemeanor diversion to dismiss charges as long as "the defendant has complied with the imposed terms and conditions" by the end of the diversion period.

"Because of your prayers, your calls, and your emails, the pressure made a difference," Life Legal said, while cautioning the peril "is not over until the case is officially dismissed."

Heartbeat International's trial over abortion pill reversal started with largely unrebutted testimony by Bonta's expert witness Mitchell Creinin, an OBGYN and researcher at the University of California Davis, who claimed there is "no science that proves anything" and "zero evidence" for abortion pill reversal, or APR, Courthouse News Service reported.

Yale School of Medicine reproductive research Director Harvey Kliman told The New York Times in 2017, however, that the progesterone protocol "makes biological sense" and he'd recommend it to his own daughter if she accidentally took mifepristone.

Creinin challenged a 2018 study that found supplemental progesterone worked 68% of the time to halt a medication abortion, claiming it was "riddled with errors and cannot be viewed as a reliable authority on abortion pill reversal testing," in Courthouse News's paraphrase.

Heartbeat's Trudden told Just the News that Creinin has a significant conflict of interest as an abortion doctor himself and a consultant for mifepristone maker Danco.

Jonna's opening statement for Heartbeat and co-defendant RealOptions, which faces a $600,000 penalty, emphasizes they aren't commercial enterprises, the basis of Bonta's "entire theory" of liability.

Heartbeat doesn't provide APR itself but simply provides information and refers women to "volunteer providers," while RealOptions provides "a wide array of clinical care for obstetrics, gynecology, and sexual health," including APR, for free, he said.

Creinin's own study on APR was "stopped early," "far too small to prove anything" and violated its own blinding protocol, Jonna said. 

Results were repeatedly "misreported" in favor of Creinin's view, including two women who experienced severe bleeding being part of the placebo group, not the progesterone group, he said: "The Court will see the receipts."