State Court Says Abortion Clinics Can Limit Pickets

The California Supreme Court, ruling for the first time in an abortion protest case, held Thursday that demonstrators can be barred from a public sidewalk in front of an abortion clinic to protect patient safety.

The 6-1 decision helps assure California’s abortion clinics of legal protection if pickets threaten patients’ emotional health, a protection that could be extended to targets of other kinds of political demonstrations as well.

“Emotionally jarring confrontations with anti-abortion pickets or sidewalk ‘counselors’ may pose serious health risks,” Justice Armand Arabian wrote for the majority.

It was the second setback for abortion protesters Thursday. President Clinton signed legislation making it a federal crime to block the entrance to an abortion clinic or attack those entering it. Two anti-abortion groups immediately filed a lawsuit to nullify the law.

The California ruling marked the first time the state’s high court has decided an abortion case since conservatives gained a majority in 1987. The U.S. Supreme Court has a similar case pending.

Justice Joyce L. Kennard, the state court’s only woman and one of its more liberal members, dissented, contending that the buffer zone approved by the court was broader than that endorsed by appellate courts.

In grappling with the case, the state high court called the collision between competing constitutional interests “the most difficult and divisive subject of our day” and acknowledged that its ruling would be controversial.

But the court majority also called its decision “manifestly reasonable and conducive to the fostering of greater harmony in the community.”

The ruling came in the approval of an injunction that forced antiabortion pickets to remain across a busy, four-lane avenue from a Planned Parenthood clinic in Vallejo, a Solano County city east of San Francisco.

The pickets had tried to dissuade women entering the clinic from having abortions. They gave them anti-abortion literature, shoving it into car windows as patients drove in, and on at least two occasions tossed them plastic replicas of fetuses.

“The state’s responsibility for the health and safety of women seeking medical services, including abortions, extends beyond the operating room,” Arabian wrote. “Physical or emotional intimidation of patients outside the doctor’s office may significantly affect their course of treatment once they are inside.”

Although the case involved abortion, the decision has ramifications for other demonstrations that limit the “rights of private citizens to conduct their lawful business without pain or hindrance,” wrote Justice Marvin Baxter, in a separate concurring opinion joined by Justice Ronald George.

Baxter said the kinds of confrontational actions taken by the abortion picketers “crossed the line from protected expression to unprotected interference with the lawful activities of other citizens.”

John R. Streett, an attorney for Solano Citizens for Life, which appealed the case to the high court, noted that the ruling could also limit the ability of unions to picket.

In the abortion context, he said, the decision will “make it very easy” for clinics to get injunctions to stop any protests on their sidewalks.

“Basically all they have to allege is, ‘Our patients are upset by this, they don’t like it, they are crying, we feel they are traumatized,’ ” Streett said. “That is not going to be much of a standard at all.”

But attorneys for Planned Parenthood said courts still will have freedom to shape injunctions according to the facts of the case, including the configuration of the clinic and its proximity to protesters.

The court ruling simply “means that patients at medical clinics have the right to be free of abuse, harassment and assault,” said Planned Parenthood attorney Stephen Kostka.

Christine Williams, former director of Solano Citizens for Life, complained that the court’s decision will make it “extremely difficult” for anti-abortion groups to give abortion patients “one last chance to change their minds.”

Pickets have been congregating weekly across the street from the Planned Parenthood clinic since a Solano County Superior Court issued the permanent injunction in August, 1991, she said.

But the protesters cannot be heard by patients through the din of traffic, she said, and their numbers have dropped because “people are very discouraged by the lack of effectiveness.”

Abortion-rights advocates have been buoyed by recent victories. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that abortion clinics can sue protesters for damage under a federal racketeering law.

“This seems to be part of a big wall that is coming down,” said Anna Runkle, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, Shasta-Diablo, which runs the Vallejo clinic. “It seems to be a landslide. The public and the law are finally saying enough is enough.”

In her dissent, Kennard said the injunction banishing the protesters to the opposite side of the street violated their 1st Amendment rights to express their views.

Although other appellate courts cited by the majority approved of buffer zones, Kennard said, they also allowed a limited number of protesters within them or drew them narrowly enough to permit protesters to communicate with patients.

By forcing the pickets to remain across the street, their message may even be “grossly misinterpreted” by passersby, she said. Also located across the street from the clinic is the office of Birthright of Vallejo/Benecia.

Passersby may assume that “the protest is against that organization, which opposes abortions, rather than against the medical clinic, which provides them,” Kennard said.

A spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California said the organization could not comment on the ruling because of an undisclosed conflict of interest. The ACLU took no position in the case.