Posted on 09/02/2011 9:49:09 PM PDT by smokingfrog
The Obama Justice Department has been taking a more aggressive approach against people who block access to abortion clinics, using a 1994 law to bring cases in greater numbers than its predecessor.
The numbers are most stark when it comes to civil lawsuits, which seek to create buffer zones around clinic entrances for people who have blocked access in the past. Under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, the Justice Department's civil rights division has filed eight civil cases since the start of the Obama administration. That's a big increase over the George W. Bush years, when one case was filed in eight years.
"There's been a substantial difference between this administration and the one immediately prior," says Ellen Gertzog, director of security for Planned Parenthood. "From where we sit, there's currently much greater willingness to carefully assess incidents when they occur and to proceed with legal action when appropriate."
Over the past two years, the Justice Department and FBI have been meeting with abortion-rights groups and medical providers all over the country to explain their work and talk about a federal task force designed to prevent violence against doctors and women seeking abortions.
The National Abortion Federation, which tracks violent incidents, says major violence is down since the 2009 murder of abortion doctor George Tiller. The man who killed Tiller has been convicted, and a federal grand jury is investigating the conduct of his alleged accomplices.
But Sharon Levin, a vice president at the National Abortion Federation, says there are still some signs of trouble, including two incidents this summer involving Molotov cocktails and the arrest of a man who told police he wanted to shoot two abortion doctors in Wisconsin.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
taking a more aggressive approach against people who block access to abortion clinics, >>
actually, sidewalk counselors don’t block access, they pray and counsel the women, usually walking side-by-side with the mothers, and try to convince them to not go in for an abortion. Planned Parenthood abortion mills are closing and the demons in the demorat party, the govt. and the press are getting scared.
Not America's allies, or American security, or American jobs, or American prosperity, or Americans' rights, or American exceptionalism.
Only abortion.
Tells you something about the devil's minion in the White House, doesn't it?
One would think that the “Justice Department” would have better things to do.
Is there somewhere to get the skinny on whether, and how, this new thrust embraces sidewalk counseling in a way that Bush era enforcement did not? I have not followed the issue as well as I ought, but I thought sidewalk counseling, typically carried out by nonviolent volunteers, had won some First Amendment victories in the USSC since the FACE act had been enacted. And that the Obama administration would in principle be liable to lawsuit if it violated those parameters. (As if it cared.)
Of course liberals want to thoroughly conflate these counselors with abortionist shooters in the public mind.
Yeah, you took the words right out of my mouth. While I don't doubt that at some point in time, somewhere, pro-life activists attempted to block access to abortion clinics, I don't see that as something that is being done at all now, by anyone, anywhere.
This is just another attempt to "frame the debate" by the lying leftists and their journ-o-list buddies. They are trying to make the pro-life activists behavior out to be unreasonable in order to allow the use of law enforcement as a means to deal with them.
Interesting stuff.
Dress up as Black Panthers to protest. Then Holder’s head will exploded trying to decide what to do.
When the the Americans and the Reds were closing in, Hitler was moving much needed and necessary recources to defend the Motherland on doubling efforts to finish killing all the Jews.
Same principal going on here, only more so. Obama is trying to destroy Israel along with the unborn.
This is rather confusing/misleading. Just about the entire article refers to the abortion industry; why would the Justice Department be meeting with medical providers about abortion matters?
Our tax dollars funded this “news” report. How long do we have to keep paying them to put out pro-death propaganda?
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