Abortion Clinic 'Buffer Zone' Bounced by Florida Judge
by Allie Martin
April 21, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The city of West Palm Beach, Florida, has been ordered to stop enforcing a buffer zone designed to keep pro-life activists away from the entrances of abortion clinics. The 20-foot buffer zone, says the winning Christian attorney, was both unprecedented and unconstitutional. The buffer zone was adopted by the West Palm Beach city commission with the backing of Mayor Lois Frankel and the owner of a local abortion clinic. A city ordinance created the zone around "healthcare" facilities in the area. But federal judge Donald Middlebrooks found not only that the zone was not necessary, but also that claims by the city were unfounded. The city had argued that the ordinance was designed to protect healthcare facilities generally; in actuality, said Middlebrooks, the ordinance targeted pro-life demonstrators at Presidential Women's Center -- an abortion clinic -- in West Palm Beach.
The Center for Law & Policy (CLP), the legal arm of the American Family Association, had sued the city on behalf of three pro-life demonstrators, claiming the buffer zone was unconstitutional. CLP senior litigation counsel Michael DePrimo says the zone made it impossible for free-speech rights to be protected.
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Michael DePrimo |
"The largest buffer zone ever upheld by the United States Supreme Court was eight feet," DePrimo explains. "Other buffer zones allowed individuals to go into the zone and stand stationary so that they could actually hand out literature to willing listeners." But as DePrimo explains, the zone enacted by West Palm Beach was considerably more restrictive. "This particular buffer zone just completely obliterated any opportunity for any demonstrator to be able to hand out literature or to, as I say, speak face-to-face with even willing listeners," he says.
The attorney says it was vital to fight for the rights of the activists -- and ultimately the lives of the unborn children on the verge of being aborted. He shares that pro-life demonstrators have had "great success" in counseling women outside the Presidential Women's Center.
"As a matter of fact, at the hearing on the preliminary injunction, two young women testified that they gave birth to babies only after they met the demonstrators at the abortion clinic," he says. According to DePrimo, those demonstrators -- his clients -- gave the two pregnant women literature which proved to them that their babies were not "blob[s] of tissue" but, in fact, human beings. "And both those women now have healthy babies," DePrimo adds.
The CLP attorney recalls his legal firm warning the city, before the lawsuit, that a buffer zone of the type it was considering would be challenged in federal court, on the grounds that it was both "unprecedented and unconstitutional." But DePrimo says the city commission ignored that warning. "Now the taxpayers have to pay the price for the commission's failure to exercise sound judgment," he notes.
Mayor Frankel has vowed to appeal the ruling in Katrina Halfpap, et al. v. City of West Palm Beach, Florida.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
