Governor Deval Patrick signed a bill yesterday establishing a 35-foot buffer zone between abortion clinic entrances and antiabortion protesters, the strictest state law of its kind in the nation, its supporters said.
Operation Rescue: Boston, an antiabortion group that holds daily vigils outside the city's abortion clinics, said the law violates the right to free speech and promised to file a lawsuit challenging the law's constitutionality within weeks.
At a bill-signing ceremony in his office yesterday, Patrick was flanked by House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi and Senate President Therese Murray.
The new law "strikes an appropriate balance between the freedom of choice and the freedom of expression," the governor said.
"The freedom of choice is secure here in this Commonwealth . . . and we mean for it to be exercised without intimidation and harassment," he said. "We also mean to respect the reasonable right to express themselves of people who have a different view."
The law took effect yesterday as soon as Patrick signed it. How it will change the atmosphere on the sidewalks outside abortion clinics is not yet clear, however. The biggest displays of protest at the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts clinic on Commonwealth Avenue in Allston occur on the second Saturday of the month, which would fall on Dec. 8.
Bill Cotter, president of Operation Rescue: Boston, said that his group will ask a federal district court judge in coming weeks to block officials from enforcing the law while Operation Rescue mounts its legal challenge.
"It is designed to, in effect, take a public forum, the public sidewalk, and make it into the private property of Planned Parenthood," he said.
The new law, which took effect yesterday, strengthens a buffer zone statute enacted in 2000 that said that, within an 18-foot radius of clinic entrances, protesters must stay at least 6 feet away from patients unless the individual consented to a closer encounter.
Abortion providers, however, said the law was unenforceable because the concept of consent was vague and had resulted in the breakdown of the intended barrier between patients and protesters. They showed reporters and lawmakers tape from a security camera at Planned Parenthood's Allston clinic, which showed protesters standing beside the clinic doorway and yelling at patients on their way in.
The tapes also showed abortion protesters videotaping patients driving in and out of the parking lot, some of which were later posted on the Internet, said Angus McQuilken, vice president for public affairs for the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.
"That's not speech; that's harassment," he said.
But abortion opponents - including the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Citizens for Life, and Operation Rescue: Boston - said that the groups simply wanted to provide information to pregnant women about alternatives to abortion and that the 35-foot buffer zone would interfere with their ability to do that.
"We have found that in order to reach women, to be able to be persuasive with them, the most important thing is personal, face-to-face contact," Cotter said.
He said that in the past year, his activists persuaded about 80 women seeking abortions to change their mind.
Whether the law would survive a constitutional challenge remains unclear.
Claudia Trevor-Wright, a Boston lawyer who has done work for the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, said she believes the law would withstand constitutional scrutiny, citing a US Supreme Court opinion upholding a 36-foot buffer zone around a specific clinic in a Florida case and a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court opinion in 2000 that said a 25-foot fixed buffer zone would pass constitutional muster. (The court's opinion was in response to the Senate's request for a review of a proposal it was considering at the time.)
Trevor-Wright said that the SJC found that a fixed buffer zone "benefits everyone, including the protesters."
"They know exactly what to do to stay within the confines of the law, and that gives them a sense of security," she said.
But Harvey Silverglate, a Boston criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer who specializes in free-speech cases, was not so sure. He said he thought that a 35-foot buffer zone may be excessive and may impede the rights of protesters.
"We can't have a law which tried to make it difficult for the demonstrator to be heard by the patient, hard as that is to say, because I've seen some of these demonstrations and they can be pretty ugly," he said. "But the First Amendment is there to protect the ugly, as well as the beautiful."
Some of the more contentious scenes outside the Planned Parenthood clinic in Allston, officials there say, have occurred on the second Saturday of each month, when abortion opponents hold a special prayer vigil there, and the crowd of protesters can grow to 50 or 100.
But on a typical weekday, only a few self-described "sidewalk counselors" stand outside the Commonwealth Avenue clinic. Yesterday, Eleanor McCullen, 71, of Newton was alone in the drizzle early yesterday morning, holding a large wooden cross and handing out literature.
There is no way to distinguish women coming in for abortions from those coming in for other health services, so she tries to say something neutral at first, such as, "How can I help you this morning?" She took care to stand well away from the clinic entrance.
McCullen said she has pictures all over her refrigerator of the babies she says she has helped save. She said she did not know how the new buffer zone would affect her ability to communicate with the women.
"If this is God's work, then he will provide an answer," she said.
