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Prolifers Sue to Burst Chicago's 'Bubble Zone' Law

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Pro-life advocates in Chicago are challenging a city ordinance that prevents them from talking with women walking into clinics to get an abortion.

Chicago's "bubble zone ordinance" creates anti-speech zones, making it illegal to approach a woman once she is walking toward an abortion clinic and within 50 feet of the entrance.

The law effectively strips pro-life sidewalk counselors of the ability to talk privately with women on their way to get an abortion. It also creates a bubble around women inside the buffer zone, prohibiting anyone from approaching them from within eight feet to hand out a leaflet or gift bag.  

Pro-life advocates filed a lawsuit accusing the city of Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, the police superintendent, and the transportation commissioner with unconstitutionally infringing on the free speech rights of pro-life counselors.

Tom Olp, an attorney with the Thomas More Society, told CBN News "we have a right under the First Amendment to communicate with those women and we want to assert our right under the First Amendment to do so."

Planned Parenthood of Illinois supports the ordinance. The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin reports that abortion giant claims the law protects its patients from protestors and "aggressive confrontations."

Chicago passed the ordinance in 2009 and Olp says several other cities across the country have similiar ordinances.

He says the Chicago ordinance also sets a double standard, allowing people who are escorting women in and out of the clinics free movement within the bubble zone.

"The escorts have a pass under the law," he said. "But the counselors do not. That's discriminatory enforcement of the law."

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