TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2007 — The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today criticized Governor Deval Patrick for signing into law a bill which more than quintuples the size of so-called buffer zones around Bay State abortion clinics.
The legislation passed the State Senate by a voice vote on October 23rd, and was approved by the House of Representatives on November 1st by a margin of 122 to 28.
The Catholic Action League called the expansion of the buffer zone law “a chilling defeat for the First Amendment, and a troubling victory for special interest and single issue politics.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C.J. Doyle stated: “It is a measure of the extremism of abortion proponents that they would substantially burden the exercise of such long established American liberties as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly — rights guaranteed by both the U.S. and Massachusetts Constitutions — in order to obtain the triumph of their ideology. This law will do nothing to enhance public safety, and everything to advance the financial interests of Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics. It will not prevent a single act of violence, but will inhibit lawful, non-violent expressive activity, including peaceful prayer on public sidewalks.”
“The real purpose behind this legislation is the ambition of abortion clinic operators to choke off and eventually suppress sidewalk counseling, which offers distressed women entering their clinics positive alternatives to abortion. After clinic owners and the doctors who perform abortions, the principal beneficiaries of this legislation will be the boyfriends of pregnant women seeking to evade the responsibilities of fatherhood. Now, in the name of preventing harassment, the only communication possible between pro-lifers and the unfortunate women entering these clinics will be raised voices at a distance of thirty five feet.”
The Catholic Action League was one of the organizations which filed an amicus curiae brief before the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth prior to its advisory opinion on the constitutionality of the original buffer zone law.
