Judge to Rule on Abortion Protesters at Clinic : Court: He says his decision will be rendered within 10 days. Family Planning Associates Medical Group Inc. is seeking a 36-foot ‘buffer zone’ at its Orange facility.

A Superior Court judge said Thursday that he will decide within 10 days whether abortion protesters who gather near the driveway of an Orange abortion clinic are harassing clients and should be forced to keep their distance.

Family Planning Associates Medical Group Inc. is asking Judge Phillip E. Cox to bar the protesters from accosting patients and blocking the clinic entrance and is arguing that the abortion foes’ “menacing activity” has escalated and could turn suddenly violent.

Attorneys for the clinic said Thursday that they are seeking a buffer of at least 36 feet, which could force the protesters across the street.

The protesters argue that they are peacefully handing out literature and exercising their First Amendment right to free speech.

At a hearing at Orange County Municipal Court in Westminster on Thursday, attended by some two dozen abortion foes, Cox said he will let the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court guide his ruling.

But the clinic and the protesters each argue that a ruling last year by the nation’s highest court favors their position. In the June, 1994, decision arising from a dispute at a Florida clinic, the court said that judges and lawmakers can create a limited “buffer zone” around an abortion clinic and prevent protesters from picketing and chanting on the streets and sidewalks in front of the facility.

The buffers can be upheld if they are “no broader than necessary to serve a significant governmental interest,” according to the decision.

In the Orange case, the clinic argues that protesters are violating patients’ rights to free access in the same way anti-abortion activists were in Florida. But the Orange protesters say that the situations are not at all comparable and that they already are more than 36 feet from the clinic’s door.

“It would be a different situation if they had blocked the door, but they haven’t,” said the activists’ attorney, David Llewellyn. “There’s no comparison whatever.”