The Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law creating 35-foot buffer zones to prevent protesters from blocking access to abortion clinics. As expected, the mainstream pro-choice movement is howling mad.
Folks, a 9 to 0 decision should make critics of the ruling stop and think. At the very least it implies the decision was a wise one. Maybe I have too much faith in humanity, but I would expect more people who want to voice long tirades against the ruling would take the time to skim the ruling.
That isn't what I've witnessed, and it's frustrating to hear the same argument marched out over and over again - that the buffer zones are needed to protect people seeking to enter an abortion clinic from being physically blocked or even attacked. Well, the justices addressed that very issue in a statement that's easy to access. The majority opinion states that while safety is a worthy goal, lawmakers need to find a way to protect people without infringing on freedom of speech.
Specifically they said:
The buffer zones burden substantially more speech than necessary to achieve the Commonwealth’s asserted inter ests. At the outset, we note that the Act is truly exceptional: Respondents and their amici identify no other State with a law that creates fixed buffer zones around abortion clinics.6 That of course does not mean that the law is invalid. It does, however, raise concern that the Commonwealth has too readily forgone options that could serve its interests just as well, without substantially burdening the kind of speech in which petitioners wish to engage.
What's troubling to me here is that so many feminist activists and organizations are complaining that pro-life protesters behave unreasonably and try to block access to abortion clinics, but they completely ignored when it when their allies blocked, screeched, swore, slandered and disrupted men's rights advocates at the University of Toronto.
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