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AFA JournalNews of InterestPro-lifers win settlement in Connecticut caseAFA Journal, February 2002 edition In a significant victory for pro-life counselors in Connecticut, a federal judge endorsed a settlement that protects their constitutional free speech rights and their efforts to save unborn children from abortion. Attorneys from the AFA Center for Law & Policy (CLP) were once again asked by pro-life counselors in that state to intervene on their behalf, this time by bringing a lawsuit against the city of Bridgeport and Summit Women’s Center, an abortion clinic. The CLP had successfully defended pro-life counselors Carmen Vazquez and Bobby Riley in a related 1997 case, United States v. Scott, when the state of Connecticut alleged that pro-lifers had violated the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. In 2001 Vazquez and nine others were plaintiffs in Vazquez v. Summit Women’s Center, Inc., in which they sued Bridgeport and the abortion clinic. In a December settlement, the city agreed that it would no longer enforce its loitering ordinance against pro-life counselors, nor would it attempt to enforce an injunction against them that had been issued against another protester. Bridgeport officials also agreed to pay $10,000 in damages, as well as attorneys’ fees. The city further acknowledged in writing that the activities of pro-life advocates at Summit Women’s Center were protected under the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees. CLP attorneys filed the lawsuit in May 2001, shortly after Bridgeport police arbitrarily created a speech-free zone outside the Summit Women’s Clinic and threatened to arrest any pro-life counselor who came within 30 feet of the entrance to the clinic. The lawsuit alleged that the clinic, volunteer escorts for the women coming in for an abortion, and Bridgeport police conspired to violate the rights of pro-life counselors. CLP Chief Counsel Stephen M. Crampton said the 10 pro-life counselors targeted by the clinic and Bridgeport officials are among the most successful in the country, having persuaded over 950 women not to abort their babies. In November, Vazquez and the other pro-life counselors settled with the clinic and the escorts when they obtained unprecedented concessions from Summit resulting in a fundamental change in the relationship between the clinic, the escorts and the city. “In this case, law-abiding citizens had to bring a federal lawsuit to protect their constitutional right to free speech simply because they were trying to save defenseless babies,” Crampton said. “[The state’s] Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, instead of investigating the unlawful actions of this abortion clinic and the city of Bridgeport, sought to intervene in this case to protect them.” Blumenthal, who also sided against the pro-life counselors in the 1997 case, was again rebuffed by the court, which denied the state’s motion to intervene in the current case. |
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