Pro-life centers targeted by 70% of abortion-related violent threats since Dobbs decision: FBI
FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing that since the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, 70% of abortion-related threats have been against pro-life centers.
A Louisville city ordinance that demarcated a buffer zone around abortion clinics has been temporarily struck down by a federal appeals court.
The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals placed a temporary ban on the enforcement of the ordinance, citing First Amendment concerns.
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The lawsuit against the ordinance was brought by the Sisters for Life of Louisville, Kentucky. The group is a pro-life, religious ministry based in the city that regularly appears outside abortion clinics offering pro-life pregnancy consultation and literature.
"Sisters for Life, several individuals, and another pro-life organization wish to offer leaflets and compassionate, if sometimes unwelcome, speech to women entering abortion clinics in Louisville, Kentucky," the court wrote in its opinion. "But Louisville-Jefferson County limited their speaking and pamphleteering in buffer zones near the entrance of each clinic. Because these limits likely violate the First Amendment[…] we preliminarily enjoin them."
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A pro-life demonstrator stands with his sign in front of EMW Women's Surgical Center, an abortion clinic, on May 8, 2021, in Louisville, Kentucky. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
The ordinance aimed to create a sizable distance between abortion clinics and would-be protesters by criminalizing demonstrations within the area.
The appeals court voiced particular objection to the vague wording of the ordinance, which it said risked over-extending its intended purview.
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"The County maintains that the ordinance creates buffer zones only when a facility requests painted lines outside its entrance. But that is not what the ordinance says. It applies always and everywhere there is a health care facility," the federal appeals court opinion reads.
Pro-life demonstrators and clinic escorts stand in front of the EMW Women's Surgical Center on May 8, 2021, in Louisville. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
It continues, "Nothing in the ordinance at any rate limits the scenarios in which a medical facility may ask for painted lines, and the First Amendment ‘does not leave us at the mercy of noblesse oblige.’"
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The Louisville Metro council passed the ordinance in May 2021, and it has been a subject of legal debate since.
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