Pro-Abortionists Continue to Fight "Choose Life" License Plates.(Brief Article)

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.