The Supreme Court has a tough one in front of it with this case. Does free speech trump possible physical danger?
A couple of mornings a week, Eleanor McCullen stakes out a spot outside the Planned Parenthood clinic here and tries to persuade women on their way in to think twice before having an abortion.
But she has to watch her step. If she crosses a painted yellow semicircle outside the clinic’s entrance, she commits a crime under a 2007 Massachusetts law.
Early last Wednesday, bundled up against the 7-degree cold, Ms. McCullen said she found the line to be intimidating, frustrating and a violation of her First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday in her challenge to the law.
Yet...
The state’s attorney general, Martha Coakley, who is the lead defendant in the suit, said the 35-foot buffer zone created by the 2007 law was a necessary response to an ugly history of harassment and violence at abortion clinics in Massachusetts, including a shooting rampage at two facilities in 1994.
It's going to be interesting what SCOTUS has to say about this. My first reaction is what difference does a few feet make? Is there some sort of Pavlovian response to having a line drawn the prevents people from committing violence? Before reading their opinions, I say that Ms. McCullen's right to free speech is being violated. It's a public street. People can say whatever they want. If you are tough enough to go get an abortion, you can withstand an extra few seconds of conversation.
Or maybe you shouldn't have been a moron in the first place and used birth control more effectively.
1 comment:
"My first reaction is what difference does a few feet make?"
Think of this in terms of the victims of the intimidation by these protesters. It's bad enough having to run the gantlet of these idiots yelling at you across the street. But to have them walk right up to you and scream in your face is not free speech, it's physical intimidation.
We have the right to free speech. We don't have the right to harass anyone we want, where ever and whenever we want. As you have so aptly pointed out in gun control arguments, reasonable limitations and regulation of our rights to free speech do not impinge upon our freedom.
You don't have the right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Do you think you have the right to scream "Whore!" and "Baby killer!" in the faces of traumatized young women who have been impregnated by abusive boyfriends and fathers?
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