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First Amendment Exception
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By
Charles Colson
CNS Commentary from BreakPoint
January 03, 2001
A Colorado law prohibits any person within a hundred feet of a
"health care facility" to come within eight feet of
another person to hand out leaflets. They may not display a
sign or "engage in oral protest, education, or counseling
with that person."
So is this a violation of the First Amendment's prohibition of
"laws abridging the freedom of speech"? You would
think so, but the Supreme Court says no.
In Hill v. Colorado, the Court ruled that Colorado's statute
is valid. Justice Stevens said it is a
"content-neutral" restriction that regulates,
"not speech," but merely certain "places where
some speech may occur."
But wait a minute, you say: Aren't liberals supposed to be
champions of individual freedoms -- especially free speech?
They claim that burning the American flag is constitutionally
protected speech. They say even Nazis have a First Amendment
right to parade their hate past the homes of elderly Holocaust
survivors in Skokie, Illinois.
Indeed, liberal judges accused the State of Indiana of
shredding the First Amendment when it enforced public nudity
laws against table-top dancers at the Kitty Kat Lounge in
South Bend. Wiggling one's naked body in a public barroom,
they say, is "free speech."
But protesting, displaying signs and handing out leaflets in
front of a "health care facility," is not
constitutionally protected speech. What on earth is going on
here?
Well, as you've no doubt guessed, the so called "health
care" facilities that Colorado's law was designed to
shield from protests are abortion clinics. The women entering
these specially protected facilities are not sick, but
pregnant. The "choices" they're about to execute are
not "health care" choices, but, rather, what
abortion defender Ronald Dworkin, with remarkable candor,
describes as "choices for death."
And to immunize such "choices" from legal
restriction -- or even private efforts to dissuade women from
submitting to abortion -- liberal judges set into motion what
Justice Scalia, in his dissent, described as "the ad hoc
nullification machine that . . . pushes aside whatever
doctrines of constitutional law stand in the way of that
highly favored practice." That is, abortion.
Well, Justice Scalia hit the nail on the head.
Abortion is pure destruction. It destroys the precious human
beings whose lives are snuffed out in utero. It is destructive
of the interests of women who are so very often, and in so
many respects, truly abortion's "secondary victims."
Abortion's record is one of taint and damage to everything it
touches, not least, fundamental American constitutional
principles. Free speech and religious liberty are only its
most recent victims.
Does anyone doubt how the Court's liberals would have resolved
this case if, instead of abortion clinics, coal mines, or gun
dealers, or tobacco shops would have been the
"facilities" singled out for unique immunities from
First Amendment guarantees?
This case exposes the rank hypocrisy of the court. Hill v.
Colorado came out as it did because the speech actually
restricted by the law is pro-life speech.
Our neighbors need to understand the issues here. Christians
are often accused of being bigoted and hypocritical. Well,
simply lay out the facts. And when you do it becomes clear to
all who the real hypocrites are in this, the greatest moral
debate of our time.
Charles Colson is
chairman of Prison
Fellowship Ministries. His daily commentary can be
heard on radio stations throughout the United States, and at
the Breakpoint
web site. |
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