Supreme Court rejects opportunity to take up abortion protest case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said it would not hear arguments in a case concerning whether pro-life protesters could approach people entering abortion facilities. A Catholic pro-life protester, Debra Vitagliano, sought to challenge a law in New York’s Westchester County that prohibited pro-life protesters from coming within eight feet of abortion facility patrons. The county repealed the “bubble” law the protester was challenging.

Why does this matter? In the 2000 case Hill v. Colorado, the Supreme Court ruled that states legislating buffer zones surrounding people entering abortion facilities were not violating protesters’ rights to freedom of speech under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. Hearing this challenge to the New York county law could have provided the Court the opportunity to overturn its ruling in Hill.

Dig deeper: Read Leah Savas’s report in Vitals about the pro-life effort to stomp out the black market for abortion-inducing drugs.