Ordinance Protecting Clinic Patients Debated : Ventura: Council considers the measure modeled after a Santa Barbara law aimed at safeguarding family planning centers.

With several other issues crowding a busy agenda, the Ventura City Council was debating late into the evening Monday whether to safeguard patients entering and leaving family planning clinics.

First proposed in 1993, the Ventura ordinance is modeled after a similar Santa Barbara law. The issue was brought back before the council Monday at the request of Councilman Steve Bennett.

The Santa Barbara law prohibits demonstrators from coming within eight feet of patients who are entering or leaving a medical office, or coming within eight feet of parishioners coming or going from a place of worship.

But a suit was filed immediately against the ordinance and a federal judge struck down the law three months ago on the grounds that it interfered with the public’s First Amendment rights to protest as guaranteed under the Constitution. That decision is being appealed.

Although a majority of Ventura’s council members seemed to agree with the Santa Barbara ordinance, the panel late Monday had not decided to approve a similar measure of its own.

“I don’t think that any member of the council is interested in getting into litigation that we don’t have to,” Mayor Tom Buford said before Monday’s meeting.

Lawyers with the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative coalition based in Phoenix, have vowed to challenge any such law adopted in Ventura.

Abortion-rights advocates clashed with anti-abortionists at the public hearing, with speakers on each side delivering emotional messages to the council.

Those who support the ordinance, which provides a “bubble” of safety for those entering a family planning facility, said that pregnant women need to feel safe when they come or go from a clinic. Detractors oppose the proposal on First Amendment grounds.

Cheryl Rollings, executive director for the Planned Parenthood offices in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, said that many of the organization’s clients feel threatened by demonstrators.

Anti-abortion picketers frequently target patients at her clinics with photographs of unborn fetuses and brochures suggesting alternatives to abortion, Rollings said.

“The ordinance in Santa Barbara has been extremely effective in helping to ensure our patients can enter the clinic without being harassed or threatened,” she said. “We’re very eager for the ordinance to make it through the appellate process and have it be reinstated.”

Rollings said that most of the demonstrations at Santa Barbara-area clinics stopped after the “bubble ordinance” was adopted in that city.

Santa Barbara City Atty. Daniel Wallace said he needs all the help he can get from other cities when he argues the merits of his city’s ordinance later this year before the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

“We want to indicate the support of other cities in the principles we establish,” he said.

Ventura Councilman Gary Tuttle said citizens everywhere deserve to be protected from intimidation and harassment.

“I supported the original ordinance when we started,” Tuttle said before Monday’s meeting. “It’s important to protect everybody’s rights--that’s why it’s worship and health facilities.”

Tuttle said the law does not limit anyone’s free-speech rights.

Anti-abortionists “are still allowed to protest, but they just have to give people their right of way,” Tuttle said. “If it took away their right to free speech, I wouldn’t support it.”