Abortion lobby radicals don’t want anyone to hear the truth about abortion.
They work tirelessly to shut down free speech by Pro-Lifers and Christians.
But now one Pro-Life activist just sued this state over its prohibition on “sidewalk counseling.”
Colorado’s ban on free speech near abortion clinics was first enacted in 1993.
A decent chance to restore freedom
Pro-Life activist Wendy Faustin has been fighting against those free speech restrictions for just as long.
Now, with last June’s Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs that overturned Roe v. Wade, Faustin believes she has a decent shot of throwing out that ban.
And by doing so, Faustin hopes to restore the First Amendment to the Centennial State.
The ban’s “bubble” or “buffer zone” around abortion mills prohibits Faustin, who knows abortion is murder and has been protesting the crime for decades, from getting closer than within eight feet of a woman entering an abortion clinic.
This violation of the Constitution was designed to stop Pro-Life activists from giving women the horrible truth of abortion.
Now, with the help of First Liberty Institute (FLI), Faustin is ready to move forward with a lawsuit to throw out the Colorado law.
Getting some encouragement
And today Faustin has some encouragement from the new Supreme Court, which may be much more likely to hear amenable to her claim that Colorado’s “eight-foot rule” is unconstitutional.
When the rule was first implemented, the Supreme Court was majority liberal and found Colorado’s law prohibiting free speech near abortion mills was Constitutional.
The law reads, “No person shall knowingly approach another person within eight feet of such person, unless such other person consents, for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling with such other person in the public way or sidewalk area within a radius of one hundred feet from any entrance door to a health-care facility.”
Of course, the very use of the term “health-care facility” is ridiculous.
It is not health care to murder children, it is murder.
But Colorado’s law was written to “protect” women from hearing anything other than the lie that they have a “right” to kill their unborn children.
The pro-abortion radicals just can’t stand anyone speaking the truth.
Creating rights out of thin air
Colorado’s unconstitutional law was challenged in 2000 and made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which (much like with the original Roe decision) created a “right” not found in the Constitution in order to keep Pro-Lifers from telling expectant mothers the truth.
Then-Justice John Paul Stevens said Colorado had a “compelling interest” in keeping the truth from those mothers.
And according to Stevens that so-called “right” is the right “to be let alone.”
Stevens wrote, “The state [of Colorado] has a compelling interest in creating this legislation. Its interest is to protect citizens entering or exiting a medical facility from unwanted communication. The law does not prevent patients from being communicated with entirely but better allows them to better avoid situations in [which] they wish to not listen to the message of speakers.”
“Even though speakers have a right to persuade, that cannot extend to unwilling listeners because people also have a right ‘to be let alone,’” Stevens claimed.
Now,the Supreme Court is different, and more conservative, and Faustin and the FLI see a chance to right the grievous wrong decided in 2000.
As Roger Byron, a lawyer for FLI, explained, “The government may not target life-affirming speech simply because it disagrees with the message. That is unlawful viewpoint discrimination. It should not be a crime to lovingly and compassionately approach another person to tell them about alternatives to abortion.”
The lawsuit filed on June 1 declares that “these restrictions are unconstitutional under [both] the First and Fourteenth Amendments,” and seeks to persuade the U.S. District Court in Colorado that under those guarantees Faustin has the right “to persuade women, one by one, not to make that choice [abortion] in the most effective place . . . outside the entrances to abortion facilities.”
Almost certainly Faustin will lose at the lower court level but is hopeful her case will make it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Pro-Life Press will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
