Legal aid groups announced two big First Amendment wins in California. The first involved a library that shut down a “Forum for Fair and Safe Sport for Girls,” an event hosted by Moms for Liberty — Yolo County and other advocates for girls and women’s sports.

The second case was won by Jessica Tapia, a teacher who was fired for refusing to comply with school policies that told her she must lie to parents and stop posting on social media about her religious beliefs.

Alliance Defending Freedom and the Institute for Free Speech announced the settlement of a lawsuit against library officials in Yolo County. As the Daily Citizen reported, library employees disrupted and shut down presentations explaining the damage from transgender ideology — violating the free speech of several individuals and groups.

California Family Council (CFC) Outreach Director Sophia Lorey described what happened at the event, held in August 2023:

“I was invited to talk about my personal story as a college athlete. I explained that men are playing in women’s sports. A library official said that I could not refer to men as men. He told me to change my language, or the event would be shut down. A few minutes later, he shut down the event, preventing me and the other speakers from communicating our message.”

In addition to Lorey, CFC, and Moms for Liberty (M4L) — Yolo County, other plaintiffs included the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, Elisabeth Bourne, Allison Snyder, Kim Jones and Erin Friday.

Cancel culture is a social and ideological phenomenon, but it has extremely personal consequences. It is the direct ostracizing, shunning, firing, muting or erasing of someone who has been deemed to hold the wrong beliefs or said supposedly intolerable things in speech or print. It can cost people their reputation, their voice, their livelihood — even their own family relationships.

Curiously, cancel culture has become a brutal weapon of the extreme Left that, just a few years ago, prided itself on being tolerant and inclusive.

Jonathan Haidt, New York University social psychologist, has stated in his forward to the important new book, The Canceling of the American Mind, that the sudden rise of this phenomenon “was as if a flock of demons was unleashed upon the world.” Something, he explains, “was training some young people to think in counterproductive and inaccurate ways.”

Haidt is referring to the social, technological, and ideological developments that led to cancel culture.

But to understand where this very real and present trouble came from, we need to go back a few decades and learn about the work of the German philosopher and guru of the New Left, Herbert Marcuse.

Marcuse was a prominent scholar in the Frankfurt School, which produced Critical Theory in the Marxist tradition of social and political theory. He established himself as the grandfather of modern cancel culture through his 1965 essay entitled “Repressive Tolerance.”

Florida law now protects women and babies from the tragedy of abortion starting at six weeks. So, when faced with an unplanned pregnancy, where can Floridians turn for help?

Florida is blessed to be home to several fantastic pregnancy-help organizations that are stepping up to meet the needs of pregnant women.

In April, Florida’s Supreme Court ruled there was no right to abortion in the state constitution. The court upheld the 15-week abortion limit and, in so doing, affirmed the heartbeat bill that protects preborn babies at six weeks.

Florida’s heartbeat bill went into effect on May 1.

As previously reported by the Daily Citizen, in 2022 alone, pregnancy resource centers across the nation provided $358 million in resources to women and families experiencing an unplanned pregnancy. Those services included “housing, counseling, prenatal medical care, baby supplies, diapers, clothing, formula, parenting classes, adoption support, and more.”

Pregnancy help organizations are incredibly popular and supported by 83% of Americans.

According to reports from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, in 2022, approximately 82,600 abortions were performed in Florida, an increase of three percent from the previous year. The growth is attributed to women traveling from out-of-state to seek an abortion in Florida. Forty-four percent of those abortions were performed after six weeks gestation.

Peaceful pro-life activist Lauren Handy has been sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison, plus three years’ probation, for her participation in a protest at an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C.

Two other pro-life activists were also given lengthy prison sentences for their role in the protest.

A federal jury in Washington, D.C. convicted Handy on Aug. 29, 2023, for violating the FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act and for “Conspiracy Against Rights.”

According to the Christian Post, on Oct. 22, 2020, Handy and nine other activists used chains, ropes and bike locks to tie themselves together, using their bodies to block access to the Washington Surgi-Clinic. They were attempting to prevent the clinic from performing abortions that day.

Handy and the other activists were concerned that the clinic’s abortionist, Cesare Santangelo, was likely violating the Born Alive Infant Protection Act by refusing to provide life-saving care to infants born alive after a failed abortion, and/or the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The remains of several later-term aborted babies were discovered by Ms. Handy and her associates, supporting their claims.

One of the infants who died, or was killed, was more than 30-weeks’ gestation — well beyond the point of viability. In other words, there is substantial evidence that Santangelo was performing illegal abortions.