Although 13 years ago Chicago Mayor Daley was against bubble zones,
At the time, he denounced it as the equivalent of a “free trade zone” and said enforcing the buffer would require “measuring tapes…You’d get into arguments.” he has since seen the necessity of giving women entering a clinic freedom from fanatics.
“You’re just trying to make sure no one’s being harassed. …If someone is going into a medical complex and I disagree with them going there, I should not harass and scream and yell at them. It doesn’t matter whether it deals with the word abortion or anything else,
Fetishists are of course up in arms that their desire to get up close and personal in their threatening and intimidation is being somewhat curtailed. And realistically it is only somewhat and still gives unfair weight to the spittle flecked hatred spewed from the mouths of those who have no concern for the lives of the women they harass and even less in the lives of the fetuses they claim to be advocating for.
It creates a protection zone within a 50-foot radius of the entrance to any hospital, medical clinic or healthcare facility. Within that zone, no one could get closer than 8 feet to pass materials, display signs, protest, educate or counsel another person without their consent.
“The unwilling listener’s interest in avoiding unwanted communication has been repeatedly identified in our cases,” wrote Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens for the 6-3 majority in the Colorado case. “It is an aspect of the broader ‘right to be let alone’ that (Justice Louis Brandeis, in 1928) characterized as ‘the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.’ ”
The nation’s high court has weighed these two, often contradictory rights many times over the years and sought middle ground that “protects the right of every citizen to reach the minds of willing listeners,” as Stevens wrote, while still “protecting listeners from unwanted communication” and making sure that restrictions are content-neutral; not based on whether the government approves of the message of the protesters.
So we have bans on picketing people’s homes in residential neighborhoods, bans on solicitation in airports, bans on at-large leafleting at state fairs, bans on electioneering at polling places and so on
The Pro-Lie crowd –those great defenders of justice do not believe in the law however, they only believe in the laws they create.
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