COLUMBUS – The American Civil Liberties Union is siding with abortion-clinic protesters over proposed buffer zones around the facilities in central Ohio.
The ACLU of Ohio on Wednesday sent a letter to Columbus city attorney Rick Pfeiffer expressing concern over a proposed ordinance that would keep protesters from coming within a certain distance from health-care clinics that perform abortions, a restriction the civil rights group says interferes with the protesters’ free speech rights.
Although the organization defends women’s access to reproductive health care, “we also have a duty to protect the fundamental rights of people to express their beliefs in public spaces,” said executive director Christine Link.
“While the intentions behind buffer zones are to protect those women who are demonized for their personal medical decisions, in practice they present an unacceptable barrier to free speech,” she said.
The proposed law would ban a person from harassing and following an individual within 15 feet of the premises. It also would prohibit blocking anyone from going into or out.
Link says the ordinance would be “redundant” because there are already legal protections against harassment on the books.
“Buffer zones provide no protections to women that are not already in place under existing law. “However they do create a scenario where the government steps in to determine what type of speech is acceptable for people to say and hear,” she said.
Columbus’ two clinics — Founder’s Women’s Health Center on E. Broad Street and Planned Parenthood on E. Main Street — have seen an increase in calls for police assistance in the past five years.