Tustin Bans Activists From Targeting Homes : Ordinance: A clinic director, whose east Tustin home has been picketed by anti-abortion protesters, asked the council to pass the measure after a Florida doctor was fatally shot outside a clinic.

For years, anti-abortion activists have huddled outside Doctors’ Family Planning Clinic in Tustin, waving signs and singing songs. For the past few months, those activists have moved closer to home, standing on the sidewalks where the clinic workers live.

But no more.

Joining about half a dozen cities in California, including Santa Ana, the Tustin City Council on Monday night passed an ordinance which prohibits pickets from targeting specific residents’ homes. The Tustin law is based on a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which says protesters may visit residential areas but cannot invade someone’s privacy by focusing on their home. It also is similar to a bill pending in the Legislature that would ban targeted picketing across the state.

“We all have a right to go home to a peaceful and quiet home,” Tustin Mayor Leslie Anne Pontious said, to explain the five-member council’s unanimous approval of the emergency ordinance. “People have a right to peace and not to be harassed on their own personal property.”

Naomi Hardin, director of the Doctors’ Family Planning Clinic, asked the city to pass the ordinance just days after the fatal March 11 shooting of a Florida doctor outside an abortion clinic, saying she feared for her safety and that of her neighbors during the demonstrations outside her east Tustin home.

Abortion-rights activists said similar ordinances and other security measures have been in the works across the country since Dr. David Gunn was shot by an anti-abortion demonstrator outside a Pensacola clinic.

“The opponents of abortion are clearly becoming more and more frustrated, their tactics have become more and more desperate and more and more venal,” said Barbara Jackson, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood in Orange and San Bernardino counties. “The question is how far do we want these activities to go? How many doctors have to be shot in the back before we realize that organized terrorist activities are not acceptable in this society?”

Allen Meadows, who heads the Tustin Pro-Life Coalition and has organized the residential protests, said his group visits clinic workers’ homes to make their families and neighbors aware of the opposition to their profession. He said several dozen people have picketed outside Hardin’s east Tustin home for an hour on three Saturday mornings--most recently on April 3.

At the protests, Meadows said, Hardin stayed inside her house and watched through the blinds as pickets stood with their placards. Some activists chanted, others handed literature to passersby as police officers monitored the protest last weekend, Meadows said.

Anti-abortion activists said they would challenge the new ordinance in court if it was not enforced according to the Supreme Court guidelines. And Sue Finn, California spokeswoman for the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, said that picketing of Hardin’s neighborhood would continue and that the clinic director would be the subject of citywide demonstrations in coming weeks.

Hardin refused to comment Tuesday, but in her letter to the City Council she wrote: “I feel that because of the recent volatile atmosphere and the death of Dr. Gunn, I am putting my family and neighbors at risk by allowing these people to demonstrate outside of my home.”

Dr. David J. Keulan, a part-time doctor at the clinic whose Huntington Beach home and Garden Grove medical office have both been targets of demonstrations by Meadows’ group in recent months, said he will consider asking his own City Council to pass a similar ordinance.

“I think these people are bullies and cowards. They are trying to set me up as a target and find a crazy person to attack me just like what happened in Florida,” said Keulan, whose name and picture have been been printed on “wanted” posters like Gunn’s and Hardin’s.

“I’m doing my job. I’m a professional. I’m pursuing my career in a legal manner--it doesn’t have anything to do with politics,” Keulan said. “The political aspects of this issue have been hashed over again and again and again, and this is a last-ditch effort by a group of cowards.”

Huntington Beach City Atty. Gail C. Hutton said Tuesday that she thinks that the City Council would approve a picketing ban if Keulan or someone else requested it.

But other cities may not need to enact individual ordinances if the state Legislature enacts the bill that would outlaw targeted residential picketing throughout California.

Hardin, the Tustin clinic director, will be the star witness testifying when that bill is presented to the state Senate Judiciary Committee on April 20, said Kelly Jensen, aide to the bill’s author, Sen. Charles Calderon (D-Whittier).

California would be the first state to pass such a law, Jensen said.

While the Supreme Court decision provides a legal basis for the Tustin ordinance and the proposed California law, some First Amendment experts disagree about protection of targeted picketing.

“Public sidewalks are public sidewalks; you can demonstrate on public sidewalks,” said Dick Herman, an attorney who often works with the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s no fun to have a picket on your front door, but that’s part of the price you pay for having a free society.”

But Patricia Herzog, another attorney and longtime ACLU member, said the expression involved in targeted pickets is harassment .

“I look at the street out in front of my house, and if people were marching up and down with placards telling me that I was a murderer, I would feel threatened and I would feel abused and I would feel that I was unfairly being attacked,” said Herzog, 70, who lives in Corona del Mar. “If you’re a free speech purist, I suppose you can go around saying anything to anybody at any time, but I think a restriction based on the privacy argument is valid here.”

Librarian Ellie Slade and correspondent Bert Eljera contributed to this article.