By Naomi Schaefer 
Staff Writer  

April 22--A woman tried to testify about her two abortions at a hearing on Beacon Hill last week. But a committee chairman tried to restrict what she said. 
 
    “It seemed like the chair was cutting off mostly the people in opposition,” to a bill that would restrict anti-abortion protesters, said Evelyn Reilly, executive director of the Massachusetts Christian Coalition. “It was not an unbiased hearing.” 

   The woman who tried to testify, Paulette Harlow, has undergone two abortions. She opposes the bill and testified before the Joint Committee on Criminal Justice on April 15. But Committee Co-Chair Cynthia Creem, the Democratic state senator of  First Middlesex and Foxboro, limited Harlow’s comments to the “[free] speech issue.” 

    The vice president for external affairs of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, Kris Anne Hormann, said: “The co-chairs did an extraordinary job of keeping the speakers focused. A number of members were there to debate abortion—not the buffer zone—and they were kept on topic.” 

    Creem and the committee may have kept debate limited. But this didn’t keep Harlow from speaking to The Massachusetts News about her experience and what a buffer-zone law would do to citizens like her. 

Protests Can Discourage Abortions  

    “If someone had shown me what a baby looks like when it’s 12 weeks old, I never would have done it [abortion],” said Harlow. She further said that she knows that she can’t take back what she did. But she wants to prevent other women from making the same mistake. 
  
     Now, once a week, Harlow takes time to stand outside abortion clinics, trying to persuade women to rethink their decision. “Could I talk to you for a minute?” she asks women entering clinics. For Harlow, stopping abortions is a question of  “information”—the women getting the procedure don’t have enough. 

    “I had two questions when I went in for my abortions: ‘Is this baby a life?’ and ‘Will this hurt?,’” said Harlow. When she was told ‘no’ on both counts, she says she didn’t get the right answers. She tries to tell these women what she didn’t know. 

    But unlike the stereotypical protester, Harlow doesn’t shout; she doesn’t wave signs in the air or hold up pictures of aborted fetuses. The law isn’t aimed at peaceful protesters like Harlow. But it will affect her just as much, and perhaps more. 

Law May Limit Free Speech  

    That’s why it was so important for her to testify at the hearing, she said. The proposed law, S.148, would prevent demonstrators of any kind from breaching a 25-foot radius of the entrances and exits to abortion or “reproductive health” clinics. This would keep counselors like Harlow from performing their duties, say opponents of  S.148.  “These are personal issues,” said Harlow.  “You can’t shout about them across the street.” 

    Nor should they have to, said Chester Darling, president of Citizens for the Preservation of Constitutional Rights. “This bill singles out one type of protest that is historically far less violent than other forms of picketing and protesting, and says that it must be regulated further than all others in the public interest,” he said. 

Anti-Abortion Protesters Are Singled Out  

    In other states that have passed similar injunctions, said  Darling, two sidewalk counselors are allowed within the bounds of the buffer zone. 

   Darling added that while his group is not taking a position on the constitutionality of abortion, he thinks that the bill “is about punishing people for disagreeing over an issue as contentious as abortion.” 

   Except for pro-life protesters, no other groups have been muzzled and “curbed” by buffer zones, said Dwight G. Dunne, associate professor of constitutional law at the Southern New England Law School, who also testified. There are only two similar laws: one keeps candidates from coming within 100 feet of voters at the polls; and one says that protesters must keep 50 feet of distance from embassies. 

Is Free Speech Intimidation?  

     Supporters of the bill insist that it’s not intended to restrict speech, but rather to protect public safety. According to a statement from the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts: “Clients risk being personally harangued, intimidated, and harmed when attempting to access reproductive health care.” 

    Hormann said: “All too often the harassment and intimidation we see every day can explode into violence. Research shows that when there is a buffer zone, the level of violence drops dramatically.” And so does the “emotional intensity,” she said. 

    Hormann thinks that “civil discourse” must be promoted in the abortion debate. But Darling points out that emotional intensity is accepted in other protest arenas such as labor disputes. 
 
    While the bill does single out abortion clinics, Hormann said that the Planned Parenthood League wants to “make sure there is no confusion about the purpose of the bill.” The buffer-zone issue, she said, “is not a debate about abortion.” 

    Yet Women’s Bar Association board member Barbara Anthony began her testimony: “A woman’s right to choose is a fundamental principle which [we] fully support as part of our mission to advance issues which affect the lives of women in the Commonwealth.” 

     Reilly of the Christian Coalition thinks that the issue isn’t about public safety or even the legality of abortion. “This is an attempt by the abortion industry to stifle the pro-life view, in particular when it cuts off their business.” 

    The clinics are an interest group like any other, she said, adding, “Profit is a strong motivation.” 
 
 

RETURN TO FRONT PAGE