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Free Speech Outside the Abortion Clinic

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The Supreme Court has given pro-life advocates free rein, even if it distresses patients. But getting people to listen is more complicated.

When Kelsey McLain, then a 25-year-old in the midst of the first trimester of her pregnancy, arrived at the abortion clinic closest to her home, her car couldnt get past the entrance of the parking lot. Protestors loomed toward the front of her vehicle. The group of 12 wielded signs covered in photos of aborted fetuses with the word murder printed across them in big block letters. McLains mother was behind the wheel, and with her foot on the brake, she gave the road blockers a choice of moving or getting run over.

The encounter didnt end after the protesters moved off to the side. As McLain got out of the car, louder shouts greeted her, accusing her of turning her back, of not wanting to know the truth. She felt growing anger but resisted the urge to lash out. She dashed inside the clinic, her mother close behind. It wasnt what I needed to deal with that day, McLain recalls.

In the clinics waiting room, McLain noticed that many of the patients seemed rattled. At that point, all they knew was that there were people outside and they were screaming at them. They didnt know their motivations or if they were good or bad people. As a woman with a self-proclaimed interest in reproductive rights, McLain had thought she was prepared for what she was going to face when she arrived at the clinic. But she, too, felt jarred. Protesters are always going to be a scary thing, no matter how much knowledge you have about them, she says.

Today, McLain witnesses pro-life activism on a weekly basis, when she volunteers as a clinic escort. Her role is to offer patients moral and physical support as they make their way past protestors, some of them quietly praying, others approaching the women with an intensity that that borders on harassment. She says protesters are quick to remind escorts and clinic staff that theyre legally entitled to be there. They comment to us that they have great lawyers, and they know their rights, and if we ever violate their right to free speech, theyll sue us, she says.

In June 2014, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law forbidding protesters from standing within 35 feet of the entrance to a reproductive health care facility. After that decision came down, the demand for escorts like McLain sharply increased, says Marty Walz, the recently retired CEO of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. The protesters definitely have greater access to our patients, right up to the front door, Walz says. And they take advantage of it. When the buffer zone was in place, the Boston clinic used escorts only on Friday and Saturdayits busiest days. Now, every day, a swarm of people descends on the building. Along with the patients, the protesterswho now number anywhere from 20 to 80 each day and the pedestrians, there are 20 to 30 additional escorts at the Boston clinic.

This growing horde of people has made the atmosphere outside the clinic tenser, more chaotic, and in general, a lot less comfortable for the patients, says Sarah Cyr-Mutty, the community relations coordinator at the Boston clinic and a regular clinic escort. No one wants to drive up to their doctors office and see over 100 people standing outside.

The activists are now able to walk right up to patientspraying, pleading, and handing out flyers. They can follow women up to the clinics doors, which means that once the patients are in the waiting room, they can still hear the chants from outside. As such, Cyr-Mutty says that the patients she escorts through the clinics doors now are often in need of more consoling than they were before the Courts decision. Whether theyre just a presence outside, or theyre really trying to interact with them, its always really upsetting to the patient.

But apart from the commotion, its not clear how much has changed since the Supreme Courts ruling in McCullen v. Coakley nine months ago. Theres no evidence that activists are succeeding in changing womens minds. What is succeeding is the one thing the Supreme Court intended: People who believe abortion is murder are able to share that message with those who least want to hear it.

It is no accident that public streets and sidewalks have developed as venues for the exchange of ideas, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the Courts opinion. Even today, they remain one of the few places where a speaker can be confident that he is not simply preaching to the choir. With respect to other means of communication, an individual confronted with an uncomfortable message can always turn the page, change the channel, or leave the Web site. Not so on public streets and sidewalks.

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Free Speech Outside the Abortion Clinic

Americans growing support for free speech doesnt …

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Americans tend to pick and choose who should be afforded civil liberties to some degree, acenturies-old issue that has flared up once again after a video ofracist chants byUniversity of Oklahoma fraternity brothers went viral. The university's president David Boren last weekexpelled two studentsfilmed making the racist chants.

The popularity of Boren's actions may be hard to nail down (more on that later), butone fascinating trend in public opinion has been quite clear.Americans have becomemore supportiveof free speech for a variety of controversial groups in recent decades, but thisgrowing acceptancehas not extended toracists.This finding comes from thelong-running General Social Survey of U.S. adults.Last year the surveyfound 60 percent saying a "person who believes blacks are genetically inferior" should be allowed to make a speech in their community, similarto the share who said so in 1976 (62 percent).

That absolute number might be surprising - a clear majority are okaywith a racist speaking out - but they also contrastwithlarger and growing shares of the public who supportallowing speech from othercontroversialgroups. Some 70 percent support allowing a speech from aperson who wants the military to run the country (70 percent), a communist (68 percent), and an anti-religionist (79 percent).The only group where people expressed less support for free speech than racists was "a Muslim clergyman who preaches hatred of the United States" -only 42 percent said this should be allowed. These trends were documented by Tom Smith and Jaesok Son of NORC at the University of Chicago in 2013.

Changing politics as well asattitudes toward sexuality and religion help explain how free speech forsome groups has become more tolerable while support for racists have stayed lower.The Cold war is over,fewer people identify with a religious faith than in the 1970s andacceptance ofhomosexuality has grown rapidly.The stagnation of tolerance for racist speech while support for speech among other groups has grown -- could indicate that the public is not purely becoming more tolerant of the rights of groups they dislike. Instead, the shifts could reflect greater public agreement with the ideas of gay and lesbian people and those who are less religious.

Reactions to the Oklahoma case could be toughto gauge if past surveys are any guide, perhaps due to the difficulty in balancingbetween support forfree speech in general and a desire to quashracism generally.Two national surveysin 1989 and 1991 found aboutsix in 10 saying college students who use racial slurs or published racist magazines should not be expelled. But a similarly large majority in a 1992 survey by Family Circle favored probation for aBrown University student who yelled racial slurs while drunk. More recently, a 2008survey by the First Amendment Center found 54percent disagreeing with the idea thatpeople should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to racial groups.

Peyton M. Craighill contributed to this report.

Surveydetails

The General Social Survey was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago usingin-person interviews with a random national sample of 2,538 adults from March31 to Oct.13, 2014. Results on attitudes toward racists are based on 1,711 interviews and have a margin of sampling error of three percentage points.Data analysis was conducted by The Washington Post.

Question wording

There are always some people whose ideas are considered bad or dangerous by other people. If [INSERT]wanted to make a speech in your community [INSERT],should he be allowed to speak, or not? Answers: Yes, allowed/Not allowed/Don't know/Refused

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Americans growing support for free speech doesnt ...

Floyd Abrams: College Campuses Pose Greatest Threat to Free Speech

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What is the greatest threat to free speech in America?

The question was the subject of a lecture this week at Temple University Law School delivered by Floyd Abrams, long one of the nations most prominent First Amendment litigators.

Mr. Abrams, a partner Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP, points his finger at academia. Heres an excerpt from his remarks, which were posted online by legal blog Concurring Opinions:

[P]ressures on freedom of expression and all too often the actual suppression of free speech comes not from outside the academy but from within it. And much of it seems to come from a minority of students, who strenuously and, I think it fair to say, contemptuously disapprove of the views of speakers whose view of the world is different than theirs and who seek to prevent those views from being heard. The amount of students who will not tolerate the expression of views with which they differ is less important than the sad reality that repetitive acts of speech suppression within and by our academic institutions persist and seem to grow in amount. And that is shameful.

Mr. Abrams highlights a number of a recent examples of recent campus speech controversies, such as the one that flared at University of California-Irvine earlier this month after student leaders there sought to ban the display of the American flag from a campus lobby.

He also talks about the decision last year by Brandeis University to offer and then withdraw an honorary degree to a human-rights advocate and former Dutch lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali because of her criticisms of Islam.

And Mr. Abrams recounted last years free speech fight at Rutgers University involving former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who reversed her decision to give a commencement address after her selection as speaker drew protests from some students and professors.

Mr. Abrams concludes:

What can one say about this other than to quote from the statement of the American Association of University Professors that, in the clearest language,observed that [o]n a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful or disturbing that it may not be expressed. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. put it well, when he was a Harvard undergraduate before the Civil War and was a student editor of Harvard Magazine. We must, he wrote in 1858, have every train of thought brought before us while we are young, and may as well at once prepare for it.

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Floyd Abrams: College Campuses Pose Greatest Threat to Free Speech

Jury says Phila. district violated ex-official's right to free speech

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After four hours of deliberation, a federal jury Tuesday night said a former Philadelphia School District official was wrongfully suspended and lost his job for exposing a $7.5 million no-bid surveillance camera contract.

The jury found that the district, former Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman, and a former top lieutenant had retaliated against Francis X. Dougherty because he told The Inquirer and federal and state authorities that Ackerman steered the no-bid contract to a small minority firm, IBS Communications Inc., that had not been approved for emergency work.

The panel, which heard five days of testimony, said the district, Ackerman, and Estelle G. Matthews, a former top human resources official, had violated Dougherty's First Amendment right to free speech by placing him on leave in December 2010, then recommending his firing.

The School Reform Commission voted in April 2011 to fire Dougherty as acting chief of operations.

The jury concluded that while Dougherty's right to free speech had been violated, the district had not broken Pennsylvania's whistle-blower law, which bars employers from retaliating against employees who allege wrongdoing.

For the First Amendment violation, the jury awarded Dougherty $1 from each of the defendants who had wronged him: the district, Ackerman, and Matthews. The trial judge will rule this month on additional damages.

Throughout the trial, Dougherty's attorneys argued that Ackerman and her administration embarked on a mission to find out who was leaking information after The Inquirer published an article on Nov. 28, 2010, that said she had pushed aside Security & Data Technologies Inc. (SDT), a Bucks County firm that had begun preliminary work on a rush contract to install surveillance cameras in 19 schools the state had deemed "persistently dangerous."

The defense maintained Dougherty lost his job after outside attorneys who conducted an investigation for the district said he had sent an e-mail about the camera project to an unknown third party and improperly sent 50 e-mails from his work account to his personal account.

The defense said that the recommendation to fire Dougherty was not tied to anything he might have told anyone about the camera project and contended that the district would have moved to fire him regardless.

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Jury says Phila. district violated ex-official's right to free speech


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