COLUMBUS, OH, June 20, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Ohio's capital is considering making it a crime to stand or speak within a 15-foot bubble zone of city abortion facilities.
Columbus City Councilwoman Elizabeth Brown proposed a city ordinance making it a crime to pray with abortion-minded women, counsel women going into the facility, or protest against abortion within 15 feet past of any abortion office's property line.
Brown said abortion facilities had increased the number of calls and complaints to police in the last five years over pro-life activity.
The free speech regulation is “in the interest of public safety and protecting the constitutional rights of women and health care workers,” she said.
“This ordinance is a solution looking for problem,” Mark Harrington, the national director of Created Equal, which is based in Columbus, told LifeSiteNews. “It is redundant, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.”
“Enforcing the law will be a nightmare for police leading to frivolous reports, citations, and possible lawsuits costing the city of Columbus money,” he said.
Harrington accused the Columbus City Council of advancing the proposal under false pretenses. “City council has one purpose in mind and that is to silence opposition at abortion facilities,” he said.
The state's pro-life leaders found support from an unexpected source. The Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) opposes the proposed Columbus ordinance on free speech grounds.
The ACLU of Ohio wrote a letter to Richard Pfeiffer, the city attorney for Columbus, against the ordinance, stating that laws against harassment are already in place, and the proposed ordinance would violate the First Amendment.
“Buffer zones provide no protections to women that are not already in place under existing law,” wrote ACLU of Ohio's Christine Link, but “present an unacceptable barrier to free speech.”
“They do create a scenario where the government steps in to determine what type of speech is acceptable for people to say and hear,” she charged.
“Censorship never stops with a single group or idea,” Link continued. “By closing the space for abortion opponents to speak, we also increase the likelihood of government to silence the stories of women that teach us why abortion access deserves the most rigorous defense.”
A similar “bubble zone” proposal failed in the Ohio Statehouse last year.
Columbus City Council is scheduled to vote on the proposed city ordinance today, June 20.
