Thursday, June 26, 2014
Getting up in your grill is Constitutionally protected
If, while doing so, you happen to harass and bully a woman who has already had to make a most difficult choice, well that is just free speech.
Because the Massachusetts law encompasses public sidewalks, the court concluded the buffer zone makes it impossible to converse with women walking to abortion clinics.So it is a vital 1st Amendment interest to impose your religious beliefs against abortion upon someone up close and personal. Can't have you yelling on a public street.
“They impose serious burdens on petitioners’ speech, depriving them of their two primary methods of communicating with arriving patients: close, personal conversations and distribution of literature,” Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. wrote of the restrictions.
Writing for the court, Roberts stressed the difference between “petitioners” and “protesters.” The purpose of the former group, which includes Eleanor McCullen and the six others who filed the suit, is to speak with women en route to abortion clinics and not yell at them, Roberts wrote.
The court noted options that Massachusetts could use to keep women safe when they go to abortion clinics. Roberts suggested Massachusetts use traffic ordinances to keep protesters away from driveways adjoining abortion clinics and pass a state law similar to the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 to keep women safe when they go to a clinic.
“Given the vital First Amendment interests at stake, it is not enough for Massachusetts simple to say that other approaches have not worked,” Roberts wrote.
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