Judge’s order targets Kentucky abortion clinic protesters
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Both sides in the abortion fight raging in Kentucky agree on one thing: The stakes are as high as ever in a state that could become the first in the nation without an abortion clinic.
Political pressure has intensified since the Kentucky GOP took control of state government and moved quickly to pass new restrictions on abortions. And Republican Gov. Matt Bevin makes no apologies for waging a licensing fight against a Louisville clinic that is the last remaining facility performing abortions in the state.
Another battle-tested participant joins the fight this weekend. Operation Save America, a Christian fundamentalist group, plans to mobilize hundreds of activists to protest against EMW Women’s Surgical Center.
The group’s leaders state their purpose unequivocally: to rid Kentucky of its last abortion clinic. Some of the group’s followers were arrested during a protest outside EMW in the spring. The group has said it won’t use those same tactics in the coming days, but a federal judge on Friday ordered the creation of a “buffer zone” to keep protesters out of an area in front of the clinic. The pre-emptive move was requested by federal prosecutors to prevent protesters from blocking access to the surgical center.
“We have never been under siege like this,” Dr. Ernest Marshall, a co-founder of the clinic open since the early 1980s, recently told The Associated Press. “We have never had any question as to whether we would exist.”
For years, protesters have been a fixture outside Marshall’s clinic, a plain brick building in Louisville’s bustling downtown. Blinds are drawn to keep people from peeking inside. Volunteers in bright orange vests stand watch near the clinic, walking patients past sign-waving activists. On a recent morning, as a demonstrator held a sign that said: “Abortion an American Holocaust,” a child walking nearby asked a woman what holocaust means.
As a volunteer whisked another woman past a handful of protesters, a demonstrator clutching a rosary told the patient’s male companion: “Men don’t kill their babies. Man up.” The man turned and glared but said nothing.
The demonstrator, Chuck Jones, defended his harsh words. “This is the last chance we’ll get to talk to them before they go in,” the retired sheet-metal worker from Indiana said. “I just wanted him to think about what he’s doing. If anybody believes in God, they can’t be for abortion, in my opinion.”
The 66-year-old Marshall — the father of three grown children and grandfather of eight — said he attends church every Sunday and is a former Sunday school teacher. He said abortion protesters don’t have a “monopoly on morals.” He condemned their tactics as “very harassing, very judgmental,” taking a toll on patients and staff.
“Some of the things I see out in front of our clinic, to me, by the pro-life people, don’t represent good Christianity,” Marshall said. “I just don’t think Jesus would harass people or name-call people or call doctors murderers.”
The number of protesters is expected to surge this weekend when Texas-based Operation Save America converges on Louisville for a weeklong vigil, with the long-term goal of making Kentucky a national model in its push to end abortion. The group urges state officials to ignore the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that legalized abortion. Its activists plan to demonstrate outside the clinic, elsewhere downtown and in the neighborhoods where the clinic’s doctors live, organizers said.