A dedicated pro-life activist has gone to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to challenge San Diego’s decision to make speech in some parts of the city conditional on the viewpoint expressed.
The situation is that in some “no-speech zones” in the city, abortion business workers, agents and volunteers can say anything they want in support of abortion, but pro-lifers are banned from expressing their perspective in opposition.
It is the Thomas More Society that is working on the case on behalf of Roger Lopez.
He objects to the district court ruling that has created a “constitutional double standard outside abortion businesses.”
“San Diego has created a constitutional travesty where Planned Parenthood employees can freely harass and pressure vulnerable women right up to the clinic door, but peaceful sidewalk counselors offering help and hope face criminal prosecution for normal conversation,” explained Peter Breen, of the society.
“The city has made sidewalk counseling virtually impossible, which violates both the rights of pro-life advocates to speak and women’s rights to receive life-saving information. We will continue to defend Roger and pro-life advocates like him, protecting their right to serve pregnant women in need, and to put a permanent end to the ‘abortion distortion’ that has stripped so many Americans of their First Amendment rights in front of abortion facilities.”
The city is accused of setting up a censorship scheme that violates both the First and the 14th Amendments.
“Courts have repeatedly upheld the rights of pro-life individuals to offer information on life-affirming alternatives to pregnant women in need, and San Diego’s ordinance runs roughshod over those precedents,” the society lawyers explained.
They have argued to the appeals court how the ordinance “creates an egregious double standard: abortion facility employees, agents, and volunteers are completely exempt from all speech restrictions and can freely approach and harass anyone within the 8-foot ‘bubble zone,’ while peaceful pro-life sidewalk counselors like Roger Lopez risk six months in jail for merely offering a leaflet or holding a sign that city officials deem harassing.”
The restrictive pro-abortion law was adopted last year and creates a host of burdens to speech for those who disagree with the abortion-for-all agenda, prompted across the country in recent years by Joe Biden.
It forbids them from coming near to a passerby, restricts the volume they can use by prohibiting noise that is ‘disturbing, excessive, or offensive … which causes discomfort or annoyance,’ and prohibits signage or speech that is claimed to ‘aggravate’ or ’cause substantial distress.’”
“Sidewalk counselors like Roger empower tens of thousands of expecting moms to choose life by connecting them with free pregnancy and parenting resources that local abortion businesses try to hide from them,” said Christopher Galiardo, staff lawyer at the Thomas More Society.
“The ordinance was drafted to suppress pro-life views and approved by an openly hostile city council. I look forward to the Ninth Circuit, long a champion of free speech, vindicating Roger’s right to offer women in need help and hope.”