Free-speech rights take center stage in debate over clinic buffer-zone bill

Apr. 21—The right to free speech was front and center in competing testimony before a N.H. Senate committee Tuesday on a bill that would revoke a law establishing a 25-foot "patient safety zone" around abortion clinics.

This buffer zone was established in 2014 under a law intended to prevent protesters from harassing or impeding patients and workers trying to enter these health care facilities.

The law, which says people can't congregate and remain within the zone, would be repealed under Republican-backed House Bill 1625, which passed the N.H. House on March 16, 168-162, and is now pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Appearing before that panel on Tuesday, Rep. Nikki Kelsey, R-Bedford, the prime sponsor of the bill, said people entering reproductive health care clinics are already protected by laws forbidding harassment, criminal threatening and assault.

Constitutional free speech guarantees should allow people to protest directly outside abortion clinics and not have to abide by a 25-foot rule, Kelsey said.

"Free speech faces growing threats at both the federal and the state level from those who would suppress their opponents' speech because they fear losing an open contest of ideas," she said.

"The New Hampshire buffer zone law is an attempt to stifle the contentious debate around abortion rather than allowing freedom of speech to serve its purpose."

She also pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in McCullen v. Coakley that a Massachusetts law prohibiting people from standing in a public sidewalk within 35 feet of an abortion facility was unconstitutional.

However, Kayla Montgomery, vice president of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, said the High Court last year left in place a buffer zone law that was challenged in Pennsylvania.

"As violence and harassment towards abortion providers and health centers has escalated, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England has considered how best to protect its patients and staff," said Montgomery, whose organization has six health centers in the state, including one in Keene.

"Now is not the time to take tools out of our toolbox that will eliminate options for protecting patient privacy and public safety," she said in a statement.

In written testimony submitted online, N.H. Rep. Amanda Elizabeth Toll, D-Keene, defended the buffer zone law.

"The state of NH has a moral responsibility to protect people from abuse when they are going to access healthcare," she said. "The buffer zone balances people's First Amendment rights to express their political opinions and the rights of patients to access the healthcare that they need safely."

She encouraged lawmakers to value "patients' physical and psychological wellbeing by not eradicating the buffer zone between protestors and patients. I am confident that the vast majority of my constituents agree with this."

A total of 2,302 expressed opposition to HB 1625 in online testimony submissions, and 148 were in support of the legislation.

Dalia Vidunas, executive director of the Equality Health Center in Concord, urged the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to recommend against passage of the bill. The panel is expected to make a recommendation to the full Senate in the coming days.

"We truly believe in the First Amendment and have tried to work out our differences with these protesters but as they've gotten worse and worse and more belligerent and hostile it has become absolutely impossible," she said. "We now have people crossing state lines to protest at Equality Health Care."

She said that on April 8, 22 protesters gathered outside a small area in front of the clinic.

"On that day, we were seeing abortion patients, we were seeing patients who just wanted birth control, we were seeing people to be tested for HIV and STDs, we were doing Pap smears on that day. We were not just doing abortions. However, every single person that came by was accused to be a murderer," Vidunas said.

She said that at one point she was assisting an unsteady, ill woman who was trying to get into the clinic to see her medical provider. Protesters tried to block her, Vidunas said.

"If it weren't for my being a fairly large-sized woman and feeling OK to push them aside, we would not have been able to go in," she said.

Vidunas said women who encounter such things typically want to maintain their privacy and are reluctant to file a complaint with police.

Jason Hennessey, president of N.H. Right to Life, testified that people who protest against abortion shouldn't be singled out for restrictions.

"What's next, banning protesters from the sidewalk in front of City Hall or at the Statehouse?" he asked. "Does New Hampshire want to be, for instance, like Russia, in suppressing dissent? Do you want to be like China, suppressing discussion of the atrocities committed against the Uyghurs? Or do we want to allow opposing viewpoints to be peacefully spoken in the public square?"

Rick Green can be reached at rgreen@keenesentinel.com or 603-355-8567.