by Kate Anderson
A Christian pro-life group filed a lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis Wednesday over an ordinance that prohibits any protests or demonstrations outside of abortion clinics, according to the lawsuit.
Pro-Life Action Ministries (PLAM), an “interdenominational” organization, has been doing sidewalk ministry and sit-ins at abortion clinics for decades, but an ordinance adopted by the city in November 2022 banned “disrupting access to reproductive healthcare facilities” from the driveway or “sidewalk or bikeway, that provides vehicular access from a street to a reproductive healthcare facility.” As a result, PLAM could not hold any sort of protest or sidewalk counseling around or nearby the clinic, prompting the group to file a lawsuit Wednesday.
“Here, the City of Minneapolis, through the enactment of Chapter 405 of the City Code, has created exclusion zones to prohibit any further exchanges between PLAM’s ministries to a woman in crisis,” the lawsuit read. “The City prohibits sidewalk counseling through created driveway and sidewalk exclusion zones making the interaction of PLAM’s ministry illegal. This case seeks to restore the constitutional rights of PLAM to conduct its life-saving sidewalk ministry within a traditional public forum.”
The ordinance was introduced to protect abortion clinics from having to deal with any protests or pro-life groups that might attempt to encourage a woman not to have an abortion. As a justification of the ordinance, councilmembers produced videos of pro-life members speaking with women driving into the clinic parking lot, according to the Star Tribune.
The lawsuit argues that any attempts by pro-life advocates to speak with women who are going into the clinic are conducted with a “caring demeanor, a calm tone of voice, and direct eye contact.” Additionally, the lawsuit argues that their conversations with women do not “block” anyone’s entrance to the clinic but cause a short delay to start a conversation, and that those discussions had resulted in over 3,000 women choosing to not have an abortion.
When drafting the ordinance, the Thomas More Society (TMS), which is representing PLAM, noted that the city deliberately constructed the ordinance to even prohibit access for peaceful protests and ministry on sidewalks that women might use to get into the clinic. TMS argued that this ordinance is a direct violation of the First Amendment and an attempt by pro-abortion advocates to take away women’s choices.
“Minnesota’s state court in July of 2022 struck down Minnesota’s informed consent, 24 hour waiting period and parental notice laws as violations of the right to abortion under the Minnesota Constitution,” Erick Kaardal, a lawyer at TSM, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Now, with all these laws nullified, the only way for many of these young, vulnerable women to get information about alternatives to abortion is the pro-life sidewalk counselors outside abortion clinics. Yet, Minneapolis’s ordinance bans such communications. Minneapolis’s ordinance is a misogynistic and cruel suppression of free speech.”
The city did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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Kate Anderson is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Pro-Life Action Ministries Rally” by Pro-Life Action Ministries.
