Court strikes down law limiting abortion protests

THE US Supreme Court yesterday struck down a law intended to protect women walking into abortion clinics from harassment by evangelical Christian protesters.

The Massachusetts law established 10-metre ‘‘buffer zones’’ around the clinics and prohibited demonstrators from speaking to women entering for the procedure.

The legislation was passed in 2007 after a series of violent antiabortion protests.

Yesterday, the high court ruled that it violated the protesters’ right to free speech under the US Constitution.

The Supreme Court called the Massachusetts law ‘‘an extreme step’’, ruling that ‘‘the buffer zones burden substantially more speech than necessary to achieve [Massachusetts’s] asserted interests’’.

The ruling was welcomed as a victory by the anti-abortion movement, who called the legislation an ‘‘unlawful attempt to deny pro-life Americans their First Amendment rights’’.

‘‘In a brazen affront to the First Amendment, Massachusetts government officials had sought to use the threat of arrest and criminal conviction to silence those offering women life-affirming alternatives to abortion,’’ said Charmaine Yoest, the president of Americans United for Life.

The Massachusetts branch

of Planned Parenthood, America’s most prominent pro-choice group, said the decision showed ‘‘a shocking disregard for the safety of patients and staff’’.

Planned Parenthood said it would immediately return to Massachusetts’s Democratcontrolled state legislature to pass a law that would protect women but also conform to the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Abortion remains a divisive issue in the United States and protesters regularly gather at clinics.

Eight people have been murdered at abortion clinics since 1977, according to the National Abortion Federation, a pro-choice group. The statistics also record 42 bombings and more arrests.

The push for buffer zones in Massachusetts stems from a shooting in 1994 when John Salvi III, a 22-year-old activist, killed two receptionists at abortion clinics in Brookline, a suburb of Boston.

The nine justices that sit in America’s highest court usually divide into liberal and conservative camps on controversial decisions, with Justice Anthony Kennedy, a centrist, casting the deciding vote.

However, yesterday all nine justices voted to strike down the law, saying Massachusetts had failed to find a balance between free speech and public order.

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