Court rules handing out leaflets near abortion centers in New York is illegal

Protections for people who want to kill preborn babies has been out of hand for a while, but it ramped up to ludicrous speed in New York when a panel of judges decided it is illegal for people to hand out pamphlets near abortion clinics. Their reasoning? If there’s a delay of “one second” in which someone must deviate from their path on the way to kill a child, that’s obstruction and violates protections for abortion access.

You can’t make this up. In a world in which some states protect the rights of “protesters” to block traffic and cause ambulances and other emergency vehicles from reaching their destinations, the act of handing out pamphlets causes far too much harm for the radical left to accept. It’s a backwards world.

Pro-life activists are fighting back. According to Bob Unruh at WND:

A petition has been filed that asks the full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to re-hear a dispute over counselors who offer help to abortion-bound women outside an abortionist’s business in New York.

The move comes after a panel of judges from the court went rogue, calling it a “physical obstruction” under the federal FACE Act, which requires access to abortion businesses, when a counselor hands out a leaflet.

Or when a patient must “deviate slightly from their path” and is delayed by “one second” in going into the abortion business.

Or when a patient must “walk around” a counselor.

Or when a driver stops his or her car voluntarily, and rolls down a window to communicate, and is handed a leaflet.

And when there is any “even minor, inadvertent contact with a patient or ‘escort,'” the court said, that would be “use of force.”

“A person commits ‘harassment’ under a local ordinance if she continues speaking, even for a moment, with a person who has indicated even implicitly that he or she does not welcome the message. The court decided that such an implicit indication has occurred where a person remains silent or declines to receive printed information,” a legal team at the Thomas More Society explained.

The battle over First Amendment rights for peaceful, pro-life advocates erupted several years ago over actions by Brooklyn’s Church@TheRock, whose members, and their pastor, Rev. Kenneth Griepp, originally were targeted by now-disgraced former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

A federal lawsuit was brought against Griepp and nine members of his congregation in June 2017, and accused them of harassing abortion-bound women outside of the Choices Medical Clinic abortion facility in Jamaica, Queens.

That came after the attorney general’s lengthy targeted surveillance campaign “produced no evidence that they violated the law,” the legal team said.

But Schneiderman labeled their speech “harassment” and asked the court to declare it to be “obstruction” under the Federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, the team said.

“The FACE Act specifically exempts constitutionally protected advocacy from its prohibitions,” explained Thomas More Society Senior Counsel Stephen Crampton. “We argued that almost the entirety of the attorney general’s case consisted in prosecution for just such protected expressive activity. The district court agreed, rejected the credibility of the state’s witnesses, the merits of the state’s arguments, and the request for the injunction itself.”

After a sexual abuse scandal forced Schneiderman out of office, his successors, first Barbara Underwood, and then Letitia James, continued to persecute the pro-life activists, the legal team said.

The lengthy trial was “marked by notorious moments. The owner of the Queens abortion facility – one of the biggest and oldest in the country — called pro-life advocates the ‘American Taliban.’ A prosecution witness falsely accused the church members of violence, but her testimony was later shown to have been lifted from an article about the actions of other people at a different abortion clinic several years earlier,” the legal team said.

In a 2018 decision, U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon of the Eastern District of New York, denied the state’s request for a preliminary injunction in People v. Griepp et al.

But then this year, the appeals court reversed, adopting the radical pro-abortion agenda presented by the state earlier.

Crampton explained that if the attempt to completely silence the pro-life advocates is successful, the abortion industry will be filing similar cases across the nation.

The radical left goes out of their way to make sure as many abortions as possible can happen. This isn’t about obstruction. It’s about the left preventing life-saving information from reaching the hands of would-be baby murderers.

‘The Purge’ by Big Tech targets conservatives, including us

Just when we thought the Covid-19 lockdowns were ending and our ability to stay afloat was improving, censorship reared its ugly head.

For the last few months, NOQ Report, Conservative Playbook, and the American Conservative Movement have appealed to our readers for assistance in staying afloat through Covid-19 lockdowns. The downturn in the economy has limited our ability to generate proper ad revenue just as our traffic was skyrocketing. We had our first sustained stretch of three months with over a million visitors in November, December, and January, but February saw a dip.

It wasn’t just the shortened month. We expected that. We also expected the continuation of dropping traffic from “woke” Big Tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, but it has actually been much worse than anticipated. Our Twitter account was banned. Both of our YouTube accounts were banned. Facebook “fact-checks” everything we post. Spotify canceled us. Medium canceled us. Apple canceled us. Why? Because we believe in the truth prevailing, and that means we will continue to discuss “taboo” topics.

The 2020 presidential election was stolen. You can’t say that on Big Tech platforms without risking cancellation, but we’d rather get cancelled for telling the truth rather than staying around to repeat mainstream media’s lies. They have been covering it up since before the election and they’ve convinced the vast majority of conservative news outlets that they will be harmed if they continue to discuss voter fraud. We refuse to back down. The truth is the truth.

The lies associated with Covid-19 are only slightly more prevalent than the suppression of valid scientific information that runs counter to the prescribed narrative. We should be allowed to ask questions about the vaccines, for example, as there is ample evidence for concern. One does not have to be an “anti-vaxxer” in order to want answers about vaccines that are still considered experimental and that have a track record in a short period of time of having side-effects, including death. One of our stories about the Johnson & Johnson “vaccine” causing blood clots was “fact-checked” and removed one day before the government hit the brakes on it. These questions and news items are not allowed on Big Tech which is just another reason we are getting canceled.

There are more topics that they refuse to allow. In turn, we refuse to stop discussing them. This is why we desperately need your help. The best way NOQ, CP, and ACM readers can help is to donate. Our Giving Fuel page makes it easy to donate one-time or monthly. Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal as well. We are on track to be short by about $4100 per month in order to maintain operations.

The second way to help is to become a partner. We’ve strongly considered seeking angel investors in the past but because we were paying the bills, it didn’t seem necessary. Now, we’re struggling to pay the bills. We had 5,657,724 sessions on our website from November, 2020, through February, 2021. Our intention is to elevate that to higher levels this year by focusing on a strategy that relies on free speech rather than being beholden to progressive Big Tech companies.

During that four-month stretch, Twitter and Facebook accounted for about 20% of our traffic. We are actively working on operating as if that traffic is zero, replacing it with platforms that operate more freely such as Gab, Parler, and others. While we were never as dependent on Big Tech as most conservative sites, we’d like to be completely free from them. That doesn’t mean we will block them, but we refuse to be beholden to companies that absolutely despise us simply because of our political ideology.

We’re heading in the right direction and we believe we’re ready talk to patriotic investors who want to not only “get in on the action” but more importantly who want to help America hear the truth. Interested investors should contact me directly with the contact button above.

As the world spirals towards radical progressivism, the need for truthful journalism has never been greater. But in these times, we need as many conservative media voices as possible. Please help keep NOQ Report going.

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