A move to expand buffers at clinics
Abortion opponents, ACLU blast bill
A bill that would nearly double the buffer zone around abortion clinics appears poised for passage on Beacon Hill, with Governor Deval Patrick, Attorney General Martha Coakley, and dozens of legislators pledging their support.
Some 75 House members and 23 senators, more than half the Senate chamber, are cosponsoring a bill that would expand the zone from 18 to 35 feet and prohibit demonstrators within that area. Under the current law, enacted in 2000, protesters can enter the 18-foot zone but must remain at least 6 feet away from patients and staff.
Appearing at a hearing yesterday before the Legislature's Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, Coakley and a Boston police official said the current law is un enforce able and has not yielded a single successful prosecution.
"It hasn't been a real buffer zone," said Captain William Evans, who was assigned for nine years to Allston-Brighton, where Planned Parenthood's Boston clinic is located. "The law hasn't stopped protesters from going inside the zone. All they have to do is freeze. They can't get into people's faces, but the patients have to go around them to get in.
"The police are like basketball referees out there, watching foot and hand movements to see if there is a violation," he said. "It was such a vague law, we've probably made only five arrests since the legislation went into effect."
A similar bill was proposed in the Senate last year, but because it was filed late in the session, it had to be funneled through the House Rules Committee, led by Representative Angelo M. Scaccia, who opposes abortion. The bill never emerged from the committee.
The bill will also face a challenge this year from abortion opponents, who call it an extreme response, and from civil libertarians, who said it would infringe on free speech.
"The legislation will substantially impede the prolife people from reaching out at the clinics," said Marie Sturgis, executive director of Massachusetts Citizens for Life. "This legislation places additional , severe restrictions on the ability of prolife people to provide important information to pregnant women who are in crisis."
The Legislature began debate on the existing law in the late 1990s, following the slaying of two clinic workers at a Brookline center in 1994 by an abortion opponent.
Originally, the law called for a 25-foot buffer zone, but after being deemed too restrictive by House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran, who also opposes abortion, the current compromise was passed, lawmakers said yesterday.
A handful of protesters demonstrate each day outside the Planned Parenthood clinic on Commonwealth Avenue, say both police and officials of the organization. On the second Saturday of each month, they say, a larger protest takes place. The demonstrators all oppose abortion, Planned Parenthood officials said. In years past, abortion-rights advocates tried to counter the protests with demonstrations of their own, but that practice has stopped.
Evans presented pictures yesterday that he said were of protesters dressed in Boston police uniform. These protesters, he said, peppered the patients with questions and intimidated them.
Sturgis said statements such as these were "trumped up."
Massachusetts Citizens for Life "does not encourage or promote violent or illegal activity, and that contrasts with the acts of violence occurring inside Massachusetts abortion clinics, " she said.
She said that establishing a 35-foot buffer would "literally put the prolife people across the street."
"They will need a bullhorn or overhead plane to carry their message," she said. "That will put them again in the position of having to shout in some sort of demonstrative way because they are so far away. I hear from post abortive women who indicate to me they wished they received something before they walked in the door of the clinic. But under the bill, the prolife people wouldn't be close enough."
The abortion opponents found an ally in the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which urged lawmakers to reject the measure.
"We're strong supporters of reproductive freedom," said Christopher Ott, spokesman for ACLU of Massachusetts, "but we're also strong supporters of freedom of expression.
"This bill is overly broad, because it would ban even silent protest, as well as efforts to respectfully distribute infor mation on either side of the issue. We need to find a better way to balance the right of access to reproductive health and the right to freedom of expression."
Patrick's undersecretary of public safety, Mary Beth Heffernan, said the governor would sign the bill if passed. "This would provide essential protection for patients and medical personnel outside of these clinics," she said.
She said she believes the law would survive any legal challenge.
A lawsuit is likely, according to Dwight Duncan, a constitutional law professor at Southern New England Law School, who testified at yesterday's hearing.
"I think there is a good chance of us challenging," he said, "and I think a fairly good chance of it succeeding, especially considering the composition of the US Supreme Court, which has changed since they last heard a buffer- zone case." 