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Washington, DC—Liberty Counsel filed an Amicus Brief with the United States Supreme Court in McCullen v. Coakley, a case challenging a Massachusetts law that creates a so-called “buffer zone” around abortion clinics. Crisis pregnancy counselors and other speakers who want to offer alternatives to abortion cannot enter a 35-foot zone around the driveway and entrance of so-called “reproductive health care facilities” without consent of the woman coming to the clinic for an abortion. Sidewalk counselors have challenged the law as violating free speech under the First Amendment, but the Massachusetts district court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law does not violate the First Amendment. The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.

The pro-abortion movement has been given special treatment. Laws which would be unconstitutional under other circumstances are sometimes found to be constitutional when the laws limit pro-life speech outside abortion clinics. Justice Scalia called this special treatment an “ad hoc nullification machine” because some court decisions nullify the First Amendment when the viewpoint of the speech is pro-life. Liberty Counsel’s brief presents the history of this improper special treatment and the unfavorable consequences that it has had on the First Amendment, and it asks the Court to declare that the special treatment no longer applies.

“The continual secularization and anti-life agenda of our government is responsible for this double standard at abortion facilities,” says Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. “Determined to continue the assault on women and the preborn, the state of Massachusetts will not even allow a woman in a crisis pregnancy to receive sidewalk counseling at a time in her life when such counseling is vital to her future and that of her unborn baby,” Staver continues. “At Liberty Counsel, nothing is more important than defending women and the preborn from the likes of Kermit Gosnell, Planned Parenthood, and others intent on filling their bank accounts by destroying women and children.”

Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics.
 

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