{"id":99697,"date":"2016-08-27T18:07:50","date_gmt":"2016-08-27T22:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.www.liveactionnews.org\/?p=99697"},"modified":"2016-08-31T13:49:12","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T17:49:12","slug":"chicago-tribune-columnist-misleads-about-pro-life-bubble-zone-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/chicago-tribune-columnist-misleads-about-pro-life-bubble-zone-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago Tribune columnist misleads about pro-life bubble zone lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

The Supreme Court\u2014even its pro-abortion justices\u2014have already taken a dim view<\/a> of restricting speech and demonstration outside of abortion facilities, but Chicago Tribune<\/em> columnist Eric Zorn still thinks<\/a> it\u2019s a worthwhile enterprise.<\/p>\n

Commenting on Pro-life Action League\u2019s lawsuit<\/a> against the city of Chicago\u2019s \u201cbubble zone\u201d law prohibiting coming within eight feet of anyone moving toward an abortionist\u2019s door (once they\u2019re within fifty feet of it), Zorn claims pro-lifers are actually championing the practice of \u201cdogging,\u201d or \u201cfollowing people down a sidewalk like a pesky canine in an effort to communicate with them against their will.\u201d Pro-life activists, he alleges, \u201cinsist that the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech implicitly gives them a right to dog.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curiously, though, he offers no quotes of pro-lifers calling for any such right. Maybe that\u2019s because quoting our actual<\/em> objections to the law would have gotten in the way of his false narrative.<\/p>\n

As Live Action News’s Danny David\u00a0covered a few days ago<\/a>, the suit\u00a0actually argues that the law is deliberately worded to be vague and confusing, and has resulted in peaceful, non-harassing pro-life demonstrators being told, by police<\/em>, that they have to stay 150 feet away from abortion facilities, cannot offer literature to anyone in the vicinity, cannot say anything<\/em> within the bubble, and must stay eight feet away from people heading to the clinic outside<\/em> the fifty-foot bubble.<\/p>\n

Pro-Life Action League\u2019s Ann Scheidler has explained<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The Chicago Police have consistently misinterpreted and misunderstood the Ordinance. Escorts recruited by the abortion clinics have either intentionally or inadvertently misstated the law and repeatedly called out the police for useless trips to the abortion clinics. With all the actual violence in our city, it has been a colossal waste of police resources to send two, three or four squad cars to the abortion clinics where peaceful pro-lifers are simply trying to exercise their first amendment right to free speech and free assembly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Are these objections unfounded? Apparently, either Zorn doesn\u2019t know, doesn\u2019t care, or concedes that they aren\u2019t, because nowhere in his column does he even mention them, let alone offer rebuttal.<\/p>\n

\"levatino-ad-LAN\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Remarkably, the entirety of his column is a straw-man. Rather than discuss the argument pro-lifers are actually making, Zorn attributes to us straw-man positions that are easier to refute (\u201cpeople using their inside voices can communicate across\u201d eight feet? Wow! Who knew?) and that caricature our intentions as fanatical:<\/p>\n

\n

What the protesters in Chicago don’t have, however, is the right to get up in the faces of patients (who may be coming to the clinics for other health treatments), to walk close beside them hectoring, shaming, gently suggesting or otherwise trying to convince them on the issue of abortion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From there he drones on about what Justice John Paul Stevens had to say about dogging, and Justice Louis Brandeis on the right to be left alone. Which is all well and good, but beside the point: pro-lifers aren\u2019t suing to so they can go dogging<\/em>, no matter how matter-of-factly Zorn sneers that \u201cwe all get why anti-abortion protesters want to dog patients outside clinics,\u201d or that the \u201cConstitution is not offended by a prohibition on the thrusting of leaflets into unwilling hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

This law wasn\u2019t needed to prevent dogging. A preliminary search finds that Illinois has a number of laws<\/a> that already seem to cover verbal abuse, unwanted following, etc. If those are inadequate to punish and deter actual cases of street harassment, by all means have a conversation about how to beef them up.<\/p>\n

But this bubble zone law didn\u2019t do that; it simply used harassment as a pretext to harass pro-lifers, in hopes that the harassment would push away any potential influence they had on the abortion industry\u2019s customers. Apparently that was good enough for Eric Zorn\u2019s propaganda needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court\u2014even its pro-abortion justices\u2014have already taken a dim view of restricting speech and demonstration outside of abortion facilities, but Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn still thinks it\u2019s a worthwhile enterprise. Commenting on Pro-life Action League\u2019s lawsuit against the city of Chicago\u2019s \u201cbubble zone\u201d law prohibiting coming within eight feet of anyone moving toward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":91402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nChicago Tribune columnist misleads about pro-life bubble zone lawsuit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Illinois has a number of laws that already cover verbal abuse & unwanted following. 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