After learning Chicago Alderman Bill Conway wants a city ordinance creating a “quiet zone” around abortion clinics, pro-life activists are pushing back on his claim they are loud, rude, and rowdy in a city that is already restricting their rights.
Conway has said he has witnessed “anti-choice protesters” yelling at women and using megaphones outside an abortion clinic in his ward.
Chicago already has strict “bubble zones” laws around abortion clinics, which restrict the rights of protesters in the name of protecting “reproductive health care.”
Mary Kate Zander, of Illinois Right to Life, tells AFN the alderman's real purpose is creating a narrative that pro-lifers are cruelly harassing women in front of abortion clinics.
“That they are shouting at them, and yelling things at them, and calling them names,” she says. “And nothing can be further from the truth.”
A majority of pro-life activists remain quiet and even pray silently, she says, and a minority of activists try to engage in a conversation with women entering the clinic.
The alderman and other abortion supporters, she concludes, are “willing to protect abortion providers at the expense of other people’s freedoms.”
