Detroit will consider an ordinance that would ban protests within 15 feet of medical facilities and limit certain interactions to within 100 feet of medical facilities.
“The ordinance, proposed by Detroit City Council Member Gabriela Santiago Romero, aims to provide protesters with unimpeded access to health care services while protecting their First Amendment rights,” said Thomas “TJ” Rogers, communications and engagement manager for Santiago Romero.
“She believes we need to protect our health care facilities and their ability to operate smoothly while ensuring the safety of staff and patients, while also safeguarding freedom of speech,” he said. “We’ve seen too many instances of people seeking health care services being harassed and intimidated, and in these politically charged times, we need to act aggressively to ensure public safety.”
Rogers said that if approved, there would be two types of “bubble zones” around health-care facilities – designated areas intended to create physical or spatial separation between two or more groups or activities.
One bubble zone is a 100-foot radius around the entrance to a health care facility where people cannot come within 8 feet of another person to “distribute fliers, hold up placards, or conduct verbal protests, education or counseling without that person’s consent,” he said in an email.
The other zone will be a 15-foot radius around the facility where congregating, patrolling, picketing or demonstrating in front of the entrance will be prohibited, except for emergency, public safety and security personnel.
A public hearing on the ordinance will be held at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 30 in the Coleman A. Young City Hall, 13th floor.
At a recent Detroit City Council meeting, several abortion rights advocates praised the ordinance, saying it would make Detroiters safer when seeking preventive and reproductive care. But in a statement, lawyers for Michigan Right to Life said the city is proposing to “ban and punish anyone who peacefully and lovingly expresses their true pro-life views about abortion on a sidewalk.”
Rogers said City Councilman Santiago Romero, who proposed the ordinance, felt it should have been in place already and was “responding to the requests of those affected.”
Asked if the ordinance was being enacted to allow people into abortion clinics, Rogers said “that’s part of it,” pointing to other demonstrations in the US where protesters have blocked access to COVID-19 vaccination sites and people have staged walkouts at hospitals.
But William Wagner, an attorney who represented Michigan Right to Life in the U.S. Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, criticized the ordinance.
“In an extreme reaction to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the city government is unjustly attempting to criminalize engagement in First Amendment activities, unconstitutionally banning some of the most protected expression in some of the places where such expression is most protected,” he said in an email.
Addressing the City Council remotely on Tuesday, Dr. Natalie Gladstein, an obstetrician-gynecologist and abortion provider in metro Detroit, said the buffer ordinance would help patients and “promote safety for people seeking health care in the city.”
“I am harassed by protesters every time I go to work. They are often armed with AR-15s and are often very threatening to me and my patients,” she said. “I don’t think anyone deserves to be harassed while seeking medical care.”
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