Pro-Life News

Federal Court Upholds 2001 Abortion Protest Arrests

A federal appeals court panel on Monday upheld the arrest of five abortion opponents at a 2001 protest in the Northland.

Though charges later were dropped, the protesters sued the Kansas City Police Department, saying that officers had infringed on their rights to free speech and assembly. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, upheld a lower court in ruling that the officers had reasonably interpreted a city ordinance as “prohibiting conduct that distracted motorists and obstructed a public street by impeding the safe flow of traffic.”

The protesters held large color photographs of aborted fetuses as they stood on public property near the intersection of Antioch and Vivion roads.

The issue was safety, not the content of the photographs, the three-judge panel ruled.

“The officers gave the demonstrators the option of staying by the side of the road if they did not display the large, graphic photographs that had distracted motorists or the option of displaying the photographs at a location further from the road,” the court wrote.

In a strongly worded dissent, however, Judge C. Arlen Beam said the officers' action probably was prompted by complaints from motorists about the graphic nature of the pictures.

“I don't understand why, in this case, we target the speaker instead of the listener who fails to control his vehicle,” Beam wrote.

Geoffrey Surtees, a lawyer representing the protesters, said further appeals were likely.

“We are disappointed by the opinion,” he said. “We're glad Judge Beam got it 110 percent right.”

Lawyer Dale Close, who represented the police department, praised the opinion, saying it showed that the officers acted reasonably.

“It looks to me like they (the appeals court judges) followed the law as we understood it,” Close said.

Posted by Editor at July 27, 2004 05:34 AM