Liberal Forum

SallyForth » 20 Jan 2014 10:21 pm » wrote: The right to free speech does not give the right to harass. We have laws against stalking, and that would be a prime example of it.

RichClem » 21 Jan 2014 9:30 am » wrote:
Yes, the right to free speech does give the right to "harass" under many circumstances.

No "stalking" is going on, and the right to free speech prohibits government from silencing speech by using distance, as the Boston law apparently does.

No other kind of protest is restricted this way, other than to protect a president's safety.

The court will decide if the distance mandated in the Boston law is excessive.

Cannonpointer » 20 Jan 2014 10:22 pm » wrote: Next, they'll allow this type of thing at the dem and repub national conventions!

Just kidding, just kidding.

Cannonpointer » 20 Jan 2014 10:22 pm » wrote:Next, they'll allow this type of thing at the dem and repub national conventions!

Just kidding, just kidding.

RichClem » 21 Jan 2014 2:31 pm » wrote:And I hope SCOTUS hears a case and throws the barriers out.
That's the freaking point.

Misty » 21 Jan 2014 3:15 pm » wrote: Why am I not surprised that you think it's okay that women should be harassed while they are attempting to undergo a legal medical procedure?
You have a very short memory if you have forgotten about all the shootings that took place at abortion clinics.
How would you like it if there were a bunch of people screaming at you when you were trying to enter your doctor's office to get your boner pills?

RichClem » 21 Jan 2014 3:20 pm » wrote:That's the burden of living in a free country; hearing things you might not like.
Thanks for revealing again how you hate our Constitutional right to freedom speech.

Misty » 21 Jan 2014 3:21 pm » wrote: It's not the speech I don't like it's the shootings.
Don't act like they never happened.

You have a warped view of what speech is anyway.
IMO, harassment and/or money do not equal speech.

RichClem » 21 Jan 2014 3:26 pm » wrote:Oh, so that's what SCOTUS will decide on, allowing shootings?

RichClem » 21 Jan 2014 3:26 pm » wrote:Oh, so you lied above then. It is the speech you don't like.
So you'd silence them by force of law.
Thanks for revealing again how you hate our Constitutional right to freedom speech.

Misty » 21 Jan 2014 3:30 pm » wrote: Where did I say that Jackhole?
Don't pretend that these abortion protesters have not killed people before.
Why should they be allowed to get closer?
So they can get a better shot?

Do you also support the Westboro Baptist Church's protests at military funerals?

RichClem » 21 Jan 2014 3:39 pm » wrote:Oh okay, so let's violate Americans' Constitutional right to free speech because someone might, snicker, "get a better shot."

I love psychotic moonbat humor.

RichClem » 21 Jan 2014 3:39 pm » wrote:So should we apply that to any group in the country that's even tangentally related to violence?
Great, let's shut up environmentalists and that moonbat Wall St. protest group.

Misty » 21 Jan 2014 3:48 pm » wrote: The First Amendment has some limits Pumpkin. You know that right?

Misty » 21 Jan 2014 3:52 pm » wrote: Anti-Abortion people are not tangentially related to violence Puss.
They have actually killed people.

It will be harmful to women if the Supreme Court overturns the 2007 Massachusetts law requiring protesters outside abortion clinics to respect a 35-foot buffer zone. While abortion opponents have cast this as a free speech issue, it is not.

Fundamentally, this is a question of unfettered access to legal health care.

Anti-abortion protesters say their First Amendment-guaranteed right to free speech is being thwarted by a state law that keeps them outside a 35-foot perimeter at reproductive health facilities. The law was enacted in response to decades of harassment targeted at people seeking entry into women’s healthcare and abortion clinics and a 1994 shooting rampage that killed two people at a Brookline Planned Parenthood clinic.

A buffer zone likely would not have changed the outcome of that tragedy, but it has meant women could make their way into clinics relatively free from harassment. Eleanor McCullen, the lead plaintiff in the McCullen V. Coakley Supreme Court case, claims the buffer zone stops her from spreading her “message of love.”

The law gives abortion opponents the opportunity to have their say — just not within a rather small perimeter around the entrances to these facilities.

While McCullen, a 77-year-old grandmother, may not be an intimidating figure, the presence of anti-abortion protesters outside clinics can be frightening. The buffer zone law exists to ensure safe passage for women who enter reproductive health clinics. Nobody should be forced to run a gauntlet in order to undergo a valid, legal — and yes, constitutionally protected — medical procedure.

It has been widely documented that this is just what women were forced to do before the buffer zone law went into effect — when protesters sometimes attempted to block clinic entrances.

Justice Antonin Scalia suggested in his questioning of lawyers during Wednesday’s oral arguments that those in the anti-abortion group are not protesters, but rather people who want to quietly counsel women. “It’s a counseling case; it’s not a protest case,” he said.

That argument is both patronizing and ludicrous.

The time for counseling is not when a woman is walking into a clinic. And the “counselors” shouldn’t be untrained, sign-toting strangers who claim they want to help by discussing a highly personal decision in public.

Does Scalia think a woman who has gotten to the point of walking into an abortion clinic has not already thought long and hard about her choices, evaluated her situation and considered her options?

Critics of the law also argue that it favors those who support abortion rights because it lets clinic workers within the buffer zone. The logic there is a stretch: how else will clinic workers get into their places of employment if not through the entrance?

That’s the simple reality about a place of employment and has nothing to do with favoring one side over the other.

The right to free speech guaranteed in the constitution is not absolute. States around the country have enacted laws creating similar protection zones for other groups of people: protesters must respect the space of mourners at funerals, keep a wide berth at political conventions, and leave space around other tension-filled or controversial sites like labor disputes and slaughterhouses, for example.

The law must respect the constitutional rights of all. The buffer zone is not shutting down free speech, simply marking out a territory — and not a very large one at that — to provide space for others to exercise their constitutionally protected right to undergo a health procedure of their choice.

Misty » 21 Jan 2014 4:03 pm » wrote:Editorial: State’s abortion clinic buffer zone law not free speech issue

No one has a First Amendment right to block a clinic entrance and deny women access to legal health care.
They have every right to protest, but they just can't do it at the entrance to the clinic.
Thirty five feet seems quite reasonable to me.

Scalia thinks these are not protesters, but rather people who want to quietly counsel women.

RichClem » 21 Jan 2014 3:57 pm » wrote:If you have actual evidence that these people conspired to help a shooter, prosecute them.
But you have no such evidence, so you're as usual smearing innocent people on the basis of zero evidence.
That's your years-long Modus Operandi. Lie and smear, lie and smear, lie and smear.

RichClem » 21 Jan 2014 4:23 pm » wrote: Many if not of them are.