Doctor Asks Ojai to Ban Pickets at Residences

Abortion protesters are a common sight at the Ventura and San Francisco Planned Parenthood clinics where Dr. James Gay has worked.

But when 16 activists paraded in front of his Ojai home on Palm Sunday, Gay said, he hit the roof.

“I was dumbfounded, and I got angry,” he said. “We called the police, but there was nothing they could do. After several hours, I eventually left with my family because it was too upsetting.”

On Tuesday, Gay appeared before the Ojai City Council waving a flyer from Operation Rescue asking supporters to picket homes of doctors who perform abortions throughout the state on July 13. Places for protesters to assemble are listed for Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

To thwart a recurrence of what Gay calls an attack on his privacy, he asked the City Council to hurriedly pass a law making it illegal to picket private residences.

“My private home is not where I conduct business,” Gay said. “I find it offensive at best that my family should be harassed at home by picketers.”

Ojai council members were unable to discuss Gay’s request because it was not on the agenda. But they asked City Manager Andrew S. Belknap to look into the matter and report back at a future meeting.

With the city’s annual budget scheduled for the council meeting June 25, Belknap said he doubts that a report could be presented to the council before early July.

Sue Finn, a Los Angeles spokeswoman for Operation Rescue of California, said her organization began picketing doctors’ homes three years ago but just started the practice in Ventura County this year. The tactic is a critical part of the group’s campaign against abortion, she said.

“We definitely feel that it is necessary to reveal to the public who is involved in killing children,” Finn said. “We’re not doing it out of spite. If he wants to be in a business that is so controversial and devastating to our country, he has to accept the consequences.”

Operation Rescue opposes any restrictions on protesters’ rights to picket private homes, Finn said. “We try to fight any injunctions that prohibit us against our First Amendment rights,” she said.

Gay said his sudden request was “a long shot.” But, he added, “these types of ordinances have been passed in other communities under similar circumstances, and I intend to see it through.”

Gay said municipal prohibitions against picketing residences where business is not conducted were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988. “The Supreme Court has upheld that picketing homes is not a lawful exercise of freedom of speech,” Gay said.

Margaret Connell, public affairs director for Planned Parenthood of Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties, said she knows of only two doctors affiliated with the agency whose homes have been picketed by abortion opponents: Gay and a Santa Barbara doctor, whom she declined to identify, whose home has been picketed twice this year.

Connell said Planned Parenthood is talking with a Santa Barbara County supervisor about the possibility of adopting a law to prohibit picketing of private homes.

Planned Parenthood has 85 employees at four clinics in the three counties. Fourteen are medical doctors who work full or part time, administrators said.

Gay acknowledges that the protesters who converged on his home March 24 were orderly and did not vandalize his property or threaten his family. But he said the group had video cameras trained on him in case he reacted after they did not disperse at his request.

“They’re very well coached and they know all the rules,” he said. “I recognized a lot of them from when they picketed Planned Parenthood.”

Gay said he works at a Planned Parenthood clinic only two mornings a month. His main source of income is from a clinic for low-income families in Fillmore.

Abortion protesters have also picketed the Fillmore clinic, which does not perform abortions, he said.

“It’s threatening my livelihood,” Gay said. “My boss told me to do what I had to to make it stop.

“They can picket Planned Parenthood, they can even picket my job, although it creates a big inconvenience for me, but they shouldn’t be able to picket my home,” he said.

“My wife’s an adult and she understands my work, but even she and my 13-year-old stepdaughter were very upset,” Gay said.

After the Palm Sunday incident, Gay said he expected another protest at his home on Easter. His neighbors understood his predicament, he said. They helped him line up a row of cars along the street to make it more difficult for protesters to parade back and forth. But no one showed up that day.