Legally Protecting Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers with Vice President of Legal Affairs at NIFLA, Anne O’Connor

Anne J. O’Connor, JD

NIFLA Vice President of Legal Affairs

https://nifla.org/

Anne O’Connor has been with the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) since 1993. She served as NIFLA’s General Counsel until she joined the staff full-time as the Vice President of Legal Affairs in April 2013. During her decades with NIFLA, Ms. O’Connor has been responsible for writing the monthly NIFLA Legal Tips (now numbering more than 280 editions), performing more than 800 Legal Audits and consulting with hundreds of centers about the medical clinic conversion process. She currently teaches at board trainings, conference workshops, webinars and at NIFLA’s Institute of Limited Obstetric Ultrasound course. She also has written and/or updated many of NIFLA’s publications, including the Legal Primer, the Medical Clinic Conversion Manual, the Medical Policies & Procedures, the Basic Operational Policies & Procedures, the Employment Handbook, and the HIPAA Voluntary Compliance Manual. She has appeared on or been published in such media outlets as Associated Press, CBN News, Washington Times, The Daily Signal, The Hill, and the American Bar Association Journal.

Ms. O’Connor is a 1987 graduate of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California, where she was inducted into the Order of the Coif, an honorary scholastic society the purpose of which is to encourage excellence in legal education. She spent her first year of law school at Georgetown Law School where she was named on the Dean’s List. In 1983, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in History from Rutgers College, New Jersey, where she was admitted to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, which invites for induction the most outstanding arts and sciences students at America’s leading colleges and universities.

Admitted to the Bars of the State of California and the State of New Jersey, as well at the U.S. District Court, California Central District, and the United States Supreme Court, Ms. O’Connor has been involved in multiple cases related to the civil rights of the unborn and protection of pregnancy centers. She has assisted in the preparation of several Amicus Briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts on pro-life matters. In the past she has represented numerous individuals exercising their first amendment rights outside of abortion clinics. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ms. O’Connor was the Executive Director of the Right to Life League of Southern California, which operated 24 pregnancy resource centers, and assisted many of them to become licensed medical clinics. Most recently, Ms. O’Connor served on the legal team that successfully challenged the constitutionality of a California law forcing pregnancy centers to advertise for abortion, NIFLA v. Becerra, 138 S.Ct. 2361 (2018).