STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE 

BOSTON, April 15 -- The perennial abortion debate launched for the
1999-2000 legislative session today with a hearing on a bill to establish
protest-free "buffer zones" around reproductive health clinics.

In a hot, noisy State House hearing room packed wall-to-wall with people,
advocates argued both sides of the abortion-linked buffer zone proposal
before the Criminal Justice Committee.  The re-filed bill (S 148) creates a
25-foot "safe zone" around entrances, driveways and other necessary
passages, where protesters would be prohibited.

Proponents say such a zone is necessary to ensure unimpeded access to
health care and to protect women from rowdy protesters, who have accosted
people with graphic abortion photographs and invective. Opponents say
buffer zones infringe on their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech
and peaceable assembly.

Lead sponsor Sen. Susan Fargo (D-Lincoln) said that with rising numbers of
clinic bombings, murders, and threats such as anthrax scares, access to
women's clinics has become a "public safety issue."  She said her bill
strikes a "reasonable balance" by allowing women unimpeded access to a
constitutionally protected service, while still allowing protesters to get
close enough to be seen and heard by those who visit clinics.

"Women's clinics have become war zones," Fargo said, describing
"in-your-face" behavior such as shouting, pushing, grabbing and spitting.
"This bill would allow women to access their right to unrestricted medical
services without fear - a right most of us take for granted."

Attorney General Thomas Reilly supported the bill, saying the atmosphere
outside clinics has become so supercharged that it's now a "question about
public safety."  He said, "This has gone beyond free speech and the
exercise of free speech.  This has gone beyond intimidation.  This is in
the realm of terrorizing people."

Reilly pledged to defend protesters' First Amendment rights, but said those
rights must be balanced against guaranteeing unimpeded access to a legal
medical procedure.  "This bill gives people the right to express their
opinion, but at a distance, when they're not in someone's face, when
they're not terrifying someone, when they're not inciting violence," he said.

Health Care Committee Chairman Rep. Harriette Chandler (D-Worcester) said
women deserve to exercise their legal right to choose abortion without
being harassed, but she added that the issue is bigger than just abortion.
The vast majority of the clinics that perform abortions also provide
hundreds of other reproductive and family planning services.  Many of the
clinics, such as Planned Parenthood and Preterm, serve poor women who don't
have health insurance.

"They (clinics) are the places where many women get their primary health
care," Chandler said.  "As chairman of health care, I ask you to think
about these women, and why they have to go through that kind of harassment
just to get their health care.  That's unconscionable."

But opponents said the bill is too broad to pass the constitutional
requirement that restrictions on free speech must be narrowly tailored.
Professor Dwight Duncan of the Southern New England School of Law said,
"This is a total ban from all clinics - hardly narrowly tailored.  It
represents a one-size-fits-all restriction on free speech."

Registered nurse Paulette Harlow said the 25-foot zone is too far for her
to deliver her message.  Harlow underwent two voluntary abortions in her
early 20s, which she said led to mental anguish, physical scars and an
emergency hysterectomy.  Now, she said, she needs to get up close,
face-to-face, to tell her personal story and convince other women not to
have abortions.

"We need to be able to tell these women the truth," she said.  "I cannot
deliver this kind of message from a distance of 25 feet."

Chester Darling, president of Citizens for the Preservation of
Constitutional Rights, called the buffer zone a "Draconian" measure that
"blatantly offends the Constitution."  A buffer zone would be unnecessary
if police did their jobs and kept the peace, Darling said.

Brookline Police Chief Daniel O'Leary, however, said his officers can't do
that job unless they have more effective law enforcement tools.  Changes
over the last few years in the interpretation of the disorderly conduct and
disturbing the peace statutes have led to prosecutors being unable to win
convictions against clinic protesters.

O'Leary's town witnessed one of the single most violent episodes of
abortion-related violence in 1994, when deranged gunman John Salvi stormed
into two Brookline reproductive health clinics, shooting and killing two
receptionists and wounding numerous others.  Before the attack, Salvi
frequently attended the regular protests outside the two clinics.

Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts President Nicki Nichols Gamble,
who headed one of the organizations at the time of Salvi's attacks, said
clinic employees deserve, as much as anyone else, a work environment free
from "the climate of harassment, intimidation and fear."  

Gamble, who is retiring in June, said, "If I could give them (staffers) one
gift before I go, it would be to guarantee they would not be harmed for
doing what they believe in, and what our clients need and ask for - access
to quality health care."

 

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