Pro-Life Group Sues To Stop Women's Clinic Access Law

WHITE PLAINS, NY — A pro-life group is suing Westchester County, Executive George Latimer and Public Safety Commissioner Terrance Raynor because the county passed a law that it claims restricts the free speech of protesters.

The organization 40 Days for Life and two pseudonymous women have asked a New York federal court to stop Westchester from enforcing the Health Care Facilities Access Act passed in June that put no-harassment zones around facilities where women seek reproductive care or abortions.

According to the legislation, health care workers and patients seeking medical treatment would be protected from being obstructed from entering or exiting a reproductive health care facility and from harassing behavior from persons within specific distances of the premises.

The law enacted a 25-foot no-harassment zone around a facility’s perimeter and established the designation of an 8-foot personal space bubble surrounding the person within 100 feet of the facility.

Christopher A. Ferrara, an attorney from the Thomas More Society, which is a conservative Roman Catholic public-interest law firm, said the floating bubble zone “is a classic content-based restriction on speech.”

“Only speech that involves ‘protest, education or counseling’ — meaning only pro-life speech, obviously — is forbidden within the floating bubble under threat of arrest, prosecution, fines and up to six months in jail,” he said. “You can talk about the weather or anything else inside the floating bubble, but if you breathe a word about the pro-life message, you are a criminal.”

The complaint, filed Nov. 24, requests a preliminary injunction to prevent the new law from being enforced while the matter is under court consideration, followed by a permanent injunction on enforcement.

Westchester County Communications Director Catherine Cioffi, when contacted by Patch, said the county believes the law is constitutional.

“The law allows for protesters to exercise their first amendment right,” she said, “while also protecting the rights of women who seek reproductive health care without harassment or obstruction.”

Plaintiffs in the complaint are 40 Days for Life, a Texas nonprofit corporation, White Plains 40 Days for Life, a New York unincorporated association, and two women identified in court documents as Jane Doe and Sally Roe.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs cite, as a pretext for the new law, what they described as “a peaceful sit-in” in November 2021 at the All Women’s Health & Medical Services in White Plains in which three members of Red Rose Rescue were arrested and eventually found guilty of third-degree criminal trespass, a misdemeanor.

The men snuck into the clinic and then confronted the patients, after which the men had to be carried out of the clinic by police.