re: #5 EPR-radar

The difficulty that I have with this SCOTUS ruling is that I fail to see how getting in someone’s face about their personal decisions can be protected speech under the first amendment. The first amendment protects freedom of expression, especially from government control. Where in that concept is the notion that the protestor is entitled to get into the face of a private citizen dealing with personal medical issues?

Where does it not? Do I have the right to walk up to someone who’s going into a Pray Away The Gay Camp to tell them that that shit really doesn’t work, and give them a pamphlet for low-cost social services?

I’m not sure why you think this would be restricted under a normal first amendment reading. Can you explain?

That said, your point about enforcing existing anti-harassment laws etc. against the protestors would make a bigger difference in practice than any theorizing about the first amendment.

One of the biggest problems is that cops don’t know 99% of the law. Most of their calls are the same things, and those don’t include the exact minutiae of distances that protesters are allowed to be, or a host of other things. A lot of the time, they think whatever laws governing this are civil, not criminal, and so refuse to do anything. At the abortion clinic I volunteered at, we had the number of a particular cop to call because he actually knew this shit, if he wasn’t on duty, then basically don’t even bother calling the cops unless they’re being violent.

I do think that the clinics and the escorts should start just suing the protesters. And I do think that ‘practicing medicine without a license’ could be extended to ‘telling perfect strangers lies about the health risks of the procedure they’re seeking under medical care’. There’s ways to go about this, but a direct charge at the first amendment isn’t one of them.

Kagan and Sotomayor aren’t fools, and they shouldn’t be ashamed of themselves.