A challenge to Carbondale, Illinois’s, law creating ‘bubble zones’ outside abortion centers presents an opportunity for the Supreme Court to reverse its 24-year-old Hill precedent infringing on pro-life sidewalk counselors’ freedom of speech.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) -- The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider a petition challenging a local law in Illinois criticized for handcuffing pro-lifers’ ability to appeal to women considering abortion in violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.
Coalition Life (CL), the nation’s largest professional pro-life sidewalk counseling organization, is challenging a 2023 “bubble zone” law in Carbondale, Illinois, which prohibits approaching women for unsolicited discussion about abortion outside of “hospitals, medical clinics, and healthcare facilities.” The law is nearly identical to a bubble zone law that the nation’s highest court upheld in the 2000 Hill case, setting national precedent that has persisted for more than two decades.
Such bubble (or “buffer”) zones are sold as protecting abortion-minded women from “harassment,” but in fact prevent respectful, peaceful pro-life activists from calmly informing them about alternatives to abortion they may not be aware of and would not be told about by their abortionist, even on public property outside a facility.
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The Washington Stand reports that, this month, the Supreme Court has finally agreed to consider CL’s petition, which seeks to not only strike down the Carbondale law but reverse the 2000 precedent, which would dramatically strengthen sidewalk counseling efforts across the country.
Following the 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade, “laws restricting free speech outside abortion clinics deserve to be reexamined,” the suit says. “Dobbs should have made clear beyond [objection] that Hill could no longer skew public debate on a divisive issue being returned to the people.”
“There are few things more central to the First Amendment than the right ‘to converse with … fellow citizens about an important subject on the public streets and sidewalks,’” the suit adds, so “the Court should grant certiorari, overrule Hill, and vindicate the time-honored principle that speech ‘on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.’”
The only member of the Court involved in the Hill case and still serving is conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who dissented. Pro-lifers hope bubble zone challenges will fare better with a more conservative majority and a legal environment less defensive of abortion thanks to Dobbs.
Despite labeling itself “pro-choice,” the abortion movement is notoriously hostile to women being told about alternatives, from publicity campaigns to malign crisis pregnancy centers as “deceptive,” to attempt to strip medical licenses from pro-life doctors, to violence and threats against pregnancy centers that are less likely to be prosecuted than purported cases of anti-abortion violence.
