Expanded N.Y. abortion-clinic buffer zones struck down
By The Associated Press
11.27.01
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NEW YORK — A federal appeals court yesterday struck down a lower court ruling that expanded protest-free zones outside two New York state abortion clinics and prevented the use of sound amplifiers during abortion protests.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Judge Richard Arcara went too far when the Buffalo jurist decided in April 1999 to greatly expand protest-free zones that had earlier been limited to 15 feet.
“That’s wonderful news. I’m very gratified,” said Christopher Ferrara, a lawyer for the American Catholic Lawyers Association Inc. He said it had become impossible to protest from so far away.
The court otherwise upheld buffer-zone provisions. It also eliminated a provision that had once allowed two protesters to enter the buffer zones and approach patients for “sidewalk counseling consisting of conversation of a non-threatening nature.”
The buffer zones were enlarged just before hundreds of abortion opponents prepared to converge on Buffalo for a week of protests.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer successfully convinced the lower court to keep protesters as far as 60 feet away from Buffalo GYN Womenservices and 30 feet away from Planned Parenthood in Rochester.
Dr. Barnett Slepian practiced at GYN Womenservices before he was killed by a sniper at his Amherst home in October 1998.
Telephone messages left yesterday with Spitzer’s office and GYN Womenservices were not immediately returned.
The appeals court wrote that the large protest-free zone outside GYN Womenservices did not just chill protest activity on a wide public sidewalk at the center, “it effectively bans it.”
The court noted that clinics in 1990 faced far larger protests than those staged outside clinics in recent years.
It said the lower court’s injunction “targets a pattern of illegal activity that lacks this ferocity.”
“If the 1990 record was insufficient to sustain an indirect ban on communicative activity at BGW, then the record here must be insufficient to support an even greater incursion on First Amendment activities,” the court said.
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Federal judge solidifies buffer zones around N.Y. abortion clinics
Ruling converts temporary restraining order granted before April 1999 Operation Save America demonstrations into more permanent injunction.
07.28.00
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Abortion foes get go-ahead to challenge clinic buffer zones
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