Anti-Abortion Tactics Escalate In Walnut Creek, Neighbor Asks City For Help

WALNUT CREEK, CA — While no longer violent, demonstrators outside a Walnut Creek Planned Parenthood center have escalated, a nearby resident told the city council Tuesday.

Julie Jones, who lives across the street from the Planned Parenthood on Oakland Boulevard, told councilmembers that anti-abortion demonstrators gathered outside the building have been bringing loudspeakers to deter people from entering the center using "very graphic and inappropriate scenarios."

She said they yell at her, beg her to talk to them, ask if she's pregnant, and tell her not to "kill her baby." They have followed her and other passers-by trying to get to work or home.

Likewise, they confront neighbors, people getting off the bus at a stop in front of the center, delivery drivers, mail carriers, and nearby workers, she said.

"It's alarming and invasive," she said.

The tactics violate not only an existing ordinance that restricts the demonstrators from using bullhorns and other devices within 100 feet of the building, but also a buffer zone set up to protect people near the center.

Planned Parenthood spokesman Christian Garcia said the demonstrators are a new group that has created alliances with existing demonstrators that have been the source of complaints over similar tactics since 2020.

In 2020, private security guards hired by members of 40 Days for Life pepper-sprayed four people outside the Planned Parenthood office, in an incident that captured nationwide attention.

The Contra Costa County D.A. charged the two men with battery and illegal possession of tear gas.

In 2022, the city created a buffer zone around the building after police received 42 calls for service at the Planned Parenthood facility between Jan. 1, 2020, and Nov. 5, 2021. The ordinance requires the anti-abortion demonstrators stay at least 8 feet away from patients.

Complaints included accusations of verbal and physical harassment and intimidation of patients and demonstrators blocking sidewalks.

Anti-abortion demonstrators harassed people trying to enter the building and nearly caused car crashes by occupying sidewalks to the point that pedestrians had to walk in the street.

"Our Planned Parenthood affiliate serves 20 counties throughout Northern California, and Walnut Creek is one of the two worst sites of harassment that we are facing," Gilda Gonzales, then-CEO of Planned Parenthood Northern California, said at the time."Multiple times a week, our staff and our patients are under siege by hostile demonstrators, and therefore we strongly support a buffer zone ordinance outside our health center," Gonzales said.

In 2024, the Walnut Creek City Council passed a sound ordinance to restrict sound amplification from bullhorns and other devices within 100 feet of the building.

Garcia told city council members Tuesday that the demonstrators move across the street when they know police are coming.

The demonstrators have become a larger problem beyond the Planned Parenthood center, Garcial told the council. "This is now a neighborhood issue."

Businesses nearby are losing customers because of the demonstrators, Garcia said.

Residents and merchants are upset, but too afraid of retaliation for speaking publicly at the meeting, he said.

The demonstrators are using free speech rights in a way that lawmakers never intended, he said.

Jones said she supports the right to free speech and peaceful protest. "However, the way the protestors go about speaking their opinions is not peaceful, and our community cannot excuse behavior that disrupts and harms others."

"At the end of the day, the people going into the clinic are going to receive health care and do not deserve the harassment that they are being subjected to," Jones said.

The new group that joined the existing one is not religious, Garcia said.

Mayor Cindy Darling said the matter will be addressed by city staff.

San Francisco and Redwood City have created similar buffer zones.