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Injunction restrains protesters at Sacramento abortion clinic made permanent

Injunction Against Protests Made Permanent

A temporary restraining order that expanded the groups covered by the restrictions on anti-abortion protests outside a Sacramento clinic was made permanent Friday in Sacramento Superior Court.

The Sanctity of Human Life Network agreed to the limitations at Friday's hearing.

"We wouldn't have won," said Harry Reeves, executive director of the anti-abortion group.

Women's Health Specialists, formerly known as the Feminist Women's Health Center, went to court last month asking that previously won limitations apply to Reeves' group.

Injunctions issued in 1990 and 2004 prohibited a wide range of protest activity, such as obstructing access to the clinic, photographing patients and screaming at clinic staff. Those limitations applied to other groups, such as Operation Rescue.

Attorney Mark Merin, who represents the clinic, said Reeves agreed to the settlement in exchange for the clinic's promise that it would not seek attorney fees and costs from the anti-abortion group.

"We estimate it would have been about $10,000," Reeves said.

"We deny the allegations that we were violating the previous injunctions. If we thought we had a chance, I would have spent the money, but this was a carbon copy of previous court rulings," Reeves said.

Last month when the preliminary injunction was issued, Merin told Judge Thomas M. Cecil that protesters use bullhorns on Saturdays to intimidate women seeking services and that sign-carrying demonstrators blocked access to the clinic driveway.

Reeves denied his group was violating a 20-foot buffer zone in front of the clinic imposed by the earlier court orders and later enacted as a county ordinance.

The clinic, founded in 1975, was firebombed in 1992. Today, it has facilities in Chico, Redding and Santa Rosa. The chronic presence of protesters was one of the reasons cited by clinic staff for moving from its former east Sacramento location to Wright Street at Alta Arden.


http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/cour
ts_legal/story/13045978p-13891741c.html

Posted by Editor at June 11, 2005 04:36 PM