Dem
47
GOP
53
Accessing abortion care at a clinic in the U.S. can be a harrowing experience. Doctors and patients are often bombarded with grotesque, inaccurate images and screaming protesters as they try to provide or get access to safe, legal and routine reproductive care. Many of these encounters have been violent: Anti-abortion extremists have murdered doctors, bombed clinics and attacked patients. Because of the very real threat to public safety these fanatics represent, many communities have enacted laws that create buffer zones around clinics to keep protesters some minimum distance away from clinic workers and patients. Buffer zones are not unusual. In fact, Donald Trump uses them all the time to keep protesters, the press, and anyone else who may say mean things to him away from his rallies, sometimes several blocks away. Unlike Trump, however, abortion providers can usually only keep protesters a few feet away.
In 2000, in Hill v. Colorado, the Supreme Court held that these types of buffer zones do not violate the First Amendment because they are not regulating what is being said, only where the speech could occur. Such time, place and manner restrictions on speech are commonly upheld if they are connected to a governmental concern, like public safety, and are narrowly tailored to achieve the desired result.
Recently, the city of Carbondale, IL, has experienced a massive influx of patients seeking abortion following the Dobbs decision. In the wake of abortion bans in neighboring states, clinics in cities like Carbondale, which is near Illinois' southern border, have tried to fill the gap in care. Here is a map showing the distance between Carbondale and three major cities in nearby states that ban nearly all abortions: St. Louis, MO, Nashville, TN, and Louisville, KY. In all three cases, a desperate woman could drive from home to the clinic in Carbondale and get back home in one day:
With patients from four states coming in, there are also protesters trying to intimidate them, which puts the public's safety at risk. Carbondale enacted a buffer zone which, like the one in Hill v. Colorado, keeps protesters 8 feet away from anyone entering or leaving a medical facility within 100 feet of the building. The protesters can still be seen and heard by their targets, but can't get close enough to harass or physically assault people seeking or providing care. This led to a lawsuit from an anti-choice group.
The lower courts, citing Hill, upheld the law and the plaintiff appealed to SCOTUS and asked it to overrule Hill. The Justices turned away the challenge, but not without getting an earful from—you guessed it—Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Thomas was on the Court when Hill was decided and he dissented then. He likes his chances now and mused that there's really not much left of Hill after Dobbs and a 2014 ruling that narrowed Hill's reach by striking down a 35-foot fixed buffer in Massachusetts. So, he reasoned, why not get rid of it once and for all?
Maybe, even in a world without stare decisis, this is the end of this conversation for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, it could be that the Court is keeping its powder dry this term (at least so far) given the many political firestorms it will have to wade into on this and other highly controversial issues. The one thing that is certain is that abortion advocates may have won this battle but the war is far from over. (L)