by Bill Cotter
Published in the May 4, 2000 Boston Globe

The abortion clinic "buffer zone" bill is currently before the Massachusetts House. On its face this bill is a clear violation of pro-lifers’ First Amendment rights. Using the rhetorical wedge of John Salvi, it criminalizes pro-life expression, while making explicit exemption for the advocates of abortion. It would turn the public sidewalk into the private property of a wealthy, powerful business, in order to exclude a competing message.

The preamble of the bill sets the stage in stark terms: pro-lifers as violent villains; abortion clinic staff and clients as their victims — generalizations offered without proof.

The bill then proposes the remedy: a 25-foot buffer zone around abortion clinic entrances, punishing violators with up to two and one-half years in jail for setting foot into the zone.

Now comes the sleight of hand. While it is exclusively pro-lifers’ activity that has been identified as the problem, the bill’s proponents now tell us that the remedy — the 25-foot buffer zone — is really aimed at everyone, not just pro-lifers or their viewpoint!

But the language of the bill contradicts this: exempt from buffer zone restrictions are "employees or agents of such facility," one example of whom are abortion clinic "escorts." These escorts walk up to approaching clinic clients and talk to them; escorts invite clients to surrender leaflets received from pro-lifers, and encourage the clients to enter the clinic. Clinic escorts and pro-life sidewalk counselors both exercise expressive behavior on the same sidewalk, but their messages have polar opposite content. The buffer zone bill will protect the carriers of one message and criminalize their pro-life opponents.

Bear in mind that abortion clinics are competitive, retail businesses, advertising in the Yellow Pages, on the radio, and elsewhere. They have a financial interest in suppressing anti-abortion messages — and a legal history, too. In 1980 an Informed Consent Law (MGL Ch. 112, Sec. 12S) was passed in Massachusetts that required abortion clinics to inform women about the nature of abortion, its risks, and of the availability of alternatives — the same information pro-lifers hand out on the sidewalk. In the case of Planned Parenthood v. Bellotti (1981) they succeeded in having the law enjoined. The pro-life message was the target of their court action then; should we believe that now it’s not?

Abortion advocates allege that pro-lifers commit — and get away with — a continual crime wave outside of abortion clinics. But if that is the case, it would be a simple matter for clinics, which are equipped with high-tech omni-directional video security systems, to present abundant evidence of these actions for prosecution under existing law; they are already illegal. They do not because their accusations are baseless, providing convenient rhetoric that bears no burden of proof.

[This paragraph was not published due to space reasons:] Those who are quick to believe false charges about pro-life violence would do well to heed the words of Joan Appleton, R.N., who testified in April, 1999 before the Criminal Justice Committee in Boston. Her testimony revealed that when she was an abortion clinic manager and nurse, she routinely fabricated reports of pro-life violence. She lied to the media; she lied under oath in the Bray injunction case in Virginia; and she lied to the U.S. Senate, falsely alleging violence by pro-lifers to help pass the F.A.C.E. law. She emphasized to the Criminal Justice Committee that such dishonesty was common among her peers; and indeed, many examples of pro-choice dishonesty could be cited. Take just one well known case: Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, who confessed, "I lied through my teeth," about the frequency of partial-birth abortion.

As for the support of the buffer zone by public officials, one who does not support the buffer zone is Boston Police Captain William Evans, commander of District 14, which encompasses Planned Parenthood’s clinic in Allston. He expressed to me his opinion that it would make policing the area more difficult.

Retired Brookline District Court Judge Henry P. Crowley, who presided over hundreds of Operation Rescue civil disobedience cases, offered this observation: "What I’ve seen in newspapers characterizing them as violent people is completely wrong" (interview in Worcester’s Catholic Free Press, 1-17-92).

Finally, someone who had extensive experience in dealing with pro-life activists is Richard Seron, a former security guard at Preterm abortion clinic in Brookline. He testified before the Criminal Justice Committee (April, 1999) that he never found us to be violent people.

It is no surprise that the pro-life message is unwelcome in today’s world; it may surprise some that communicating that message does not require forfeiting your First Amendment rights.

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