Balancing Rights and Protecting Women’s Access
Date: Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments about the constitutionality of a
law creating a buffer zone around the entrance of facilities that provide
abortion care. Many years ago, I led a campaign to create the
first-ever buffer zones to protect people going to reproductive health service
facilities from harassment and intimidation. In the decades since,
then buffer zones have protected countless women and men. But I
have to admit, I’m worried about what the court will do.
Opponents of abortion argue that they should be free to express opposition to
abortion with no limits on when, where and how that expression takes
place. I don’t agree.
In the same way that polling places have buffer zones around them that protect
voters from in-your-face electioneering, I think the government has a
responsibility to protect women and men seeking reproductive health care from
in-your-face harassment and intimidation as they enter a health care facility.And I believe the Constitution gives us the right to establish laws that offer
that protection.
The campaign that led to the creation of the first buffer zones was inspired,
in part, by my experience working at a clinic that prided itself on providing a
full range of high quality reproductive health care. When protesters
targeted our clinics, I saw how unregulated protests could interfere with good
health care. I saw how a woman’s health could be harmed when she was
subjected to the treatment that protesters inflicted on the patients we cared
for.
But you know that I believe in the right to protest too! Buffer zones
leave plenty of room for opponents of abortion to make their views known and
their voices heard, while still creating a zone of protected space that allows
patients to go in and out of a clinic without feeling intimidated. The
buffer zone law we created and the others that followed balance the rights of
protestors to speak and the rights of women and men to act on a personal
reproductive health decision.
We won’t learn the outcome of this case today, but you can count on me and the
National Women’s Health Network, to keep speaking out about the importance of
balancing these rights so that we can protect every woman’s access to
reproductive health care. Watch our websitefor regular updates on this case and opportunities to join the NWHN in taking
action to protect a woman’s health and her access to reproductive health care.
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