Mon Jun 12, 2023 – 5:56 pm EDT
DENVER (LifeSiteNews) – Colorado pro-life activist Wendy Faustin filed a lawsuit in hopes of eliminating the state’s “bubble law” limiting peaceful sidewalk counseling outside abortion facilities, arguing that the law infringes on pro-lifers’ constitutional right to free speech as well as equal protection under the law.
Colorado’s 1993 law forbids anyone within 100 feet of the entrance to an abortion center from “knowingly approach[ing]” within 8 feet of someone else without his or her consent for the purpose of passing “a leaflet or handbill to, displa[y] a sign to, or engag[e] in oral protest, education, or counseling with [that] person.” The U.S. Supreme Court upheld it in 2000.
Fox News reported that on June 1, Faustin filed a challenge to the law, as well as a related local ordinance in Denver, with the U.S. District Court of Colorado on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds. She argues that the law makes meaningful respectful dialogue with women considering abortion all but impossible, forcing pro-lifers to yell from a distance in order to be heard at all.
“The basic idea is that free speech means the government can’t squash or silence
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