Ventura May Protect Patients From Protesters : Clinics: Council will consider a law to restrain anti-abortion demonstrators, but some critics already question its constitutionality.

Seeking to protect patients from anti-abortion demonstrators, the Ventura City Council on Monday will consider a law that makes it illegal to interrupt anyone entering or leaving a family planning clinic.

The proposed law mirrors an ordinance passed in 1993 by the Santa Barbara City Council that has since been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. But Santa Barbara has appealed that ruling.

Although a draft ordinance already has been prepared, Ventura City Atty. Peter D. Bulens is recommending that council members delay acting on the proposal until appeals have been settled in the Santa Barbara case.

Instead, Bulens is suggesting that the council approve filing a brief with U.S. District Court in San Francisco supporting the Santa Barbara law.

The Santa Barbara City Council unanimously approved the law after self-described “sidewalk counselors” armed with pictures of months-old fetuses routinely stopped patients on their way into family planning clinics.

The Ventura City Council in 1993 voted 5 to 1 to direct the city attorney to draw up a so-called bubble ordinance--a law that prohibits demonstrators from coming within eight feet of anyone coming or going from a church or health clinic once they ask to be left alone.

“The public deserves safe conduct going into any building, whether it’s City Hall, the library, a bank, health clinics or hospitals,” Councilman Jim Monahan said Friday. “People going into such facilities should not be obstructed.”

Family planning officials in Ventura say their clinics have been targeted by anti-abortion activists only infrequently.

But the law would “continue to allow patients to enter into family planning clinics like ours and receive services without harassment,” said April Fernandez, director of the Planned Parenthood office in Ventura.

Patients “should not be harassed based on their beliefs or services that they need,” she said.

But Benjamin W. Bull, an attorney with the Phoenix-based American Center for Law and Justice, said the proposed law is unconstitutional because it limits freedom of expression.

“If the abortion facility is claiming that certain individuals are engaged in blocking or violence, then they should pass an ordinance against blocking or violence,” said Bull, who is representing a Santa Barbara woman who sued that city after it adopted a similar law.

“But they’re not doing that, and that’s why it’s unconstitutional,” he said.

Bull, who likened his organization to “a conservative ACLU,” welcomed the Ventura proposal as another opportunity to champion the 1st Amendment. “Let them enact it,” he said. “We’ll be in court within a couple of weeks. It will go down like all the other ones have gone down.”

Nearly 50 people crowded City Hall when the Ventura City Council last considered the issue in November, 1993. Despite emotional pleas from a dozen or more anti-abortion demonstrators, only Councilman Jack Tingstrom opposed pursuing the bubble ordinance.

“I still feel the same way,” Tingstrom said Friday. “Nothing’s changed.”

Although California’s coastal communities have remained relatively free of the violence that has erupted at other clinics across the country, health care workers remain guarded.

During a three-week stretch in February, arsonists targeted five clinics between Ventura and San Francisco, although most of the attacks did little damage.

On Feb. 9, someone started a fire at the Family Planning Associates office on East Thompson Boulevard. Firefighters extinguished the blaze within minutes and estimated damage at about $1,000.

Two days later, another clinic in Santa Barbara was similarly attacked, and on Feb. 15, an arson fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in San Luis Obispo caused $50,000 in damage.

Two other fires occurred in Santa Cruz and San Francisco before the month was over. Investigators have made no arrests in any of the incidents, the FBI said Friday.

Ventura Assistant City Atty. Michael Dougherty said the brief his office recommends be filed with the federal appeals court could help sway the judge.

“It’s a hard thing to determine what the court relies on, but they’re going to read it for sure,” Dougherty said. “Whether or not they adopt its views is another matter.”

Santa Barbara City Atty. Daniel Wallace said the city hopes to receive support from as many as two dozen cities before the judge rules on the issue.