bubble that moves with you where people can t get closer to you than eight feet if you don t want them to. if you re trying to get into a clinic. they can still scream at you and show you pictures you don t want to see and berate you and all the stuff they may want to do, but they can t physically get closer to you than eight feet. in massachusetts where they had those murders in brookline, two people killed and the five people wounded in that onslaught that day, in massachusetts they tried their own massachusetts version of that colorado law, but the protests were so vociferous, local police said it was not a workable law for them. in testimony before the massachusetts legislature, seven years into massachusetts trying to enforce their version of the sort of bubble law, the man who s now boston s commissioner of police told the legislature the floating bubble law was basically impossible for police to enforce outside massachusetts clinics. he said, i like to make the reference of bas
pensacola was the first one that happened. in the 90s. then it happened again in pensacola. happened in wichita. happened in massachusetts. happened in alabama. happened all over the country all over the last 20, 25 years. what is specific and knowable about these shootings is that they are connected. in the sense that the people who are shooting up abortion clinics and shooting doctors who provide abortions, they are part of a political network and political movement of people who support that kind of violence for political reasons. so this group, the missionaries to the preborn is their name, that s the group that blockaded milwaukee for the whole summer of 1992, and then they came back in 1996 and cut holes in the oldsmobile and the buick and bolted their necks into steel i beams to try to shut down those clinics. the same group, the last time they made national news was in 2007 again in milwaukee when they decided to celebrate, literally celebrate the anniversary of that doctor
that is basically a no-protest zone, a bubble like you ve got around polling places, like you ve got around military funerals. like the justices of the supreme court enjoy every day. that fixed zone was designed to keep those clinic entrances open and people going in and out of the clinics safe, after decades of murder and mayhem outside clinics just like that. today the supreme court overturned that massachusetts law. from inside their own protective buffer zone, the supreme court issued its majority ruling striking down the one outside abortion clinics. ruling written by chief justice john roberts chastises massachusetts for trying to stop them who, wish to converse with their citizens on public streets and sidewalks. massachusetts enacted this law, painted that stripe for a specific reason. there s been a lot of discussion today since this ruling this morning about what options the state has now that this law has been struck down. how are they going to respond? what are they going
interesting to me looking at the history of how massachusetts has tried to deal with the issue about danger at clinics and protests at clinics, is that massachusetts did, in 2000, governor cellucci, republican governor, i believe, signed a law that created a different buffer zone, one more like colorado s which at this point is still standing according to the supreme court. that was sort of a moving buffer zone around individuals as they tried to get in and out of clinics rather than just a fixed space that was a no-protest area. why didn t that work? why wasn t that perceived to be working in massachusetts? that law didn t work because it allowed the protesters in stand in the doorway of the health center. for someone coming into the health center to get health care, they had to walk up to the protesters and thread their way through a big group of screaming people just to get in the door. so the law didn t work because the patients had to approach the protesters. and in that instanc
coverage of a deadly shooting incident at two abortion clinics in massachusetts in 1994. lawmakers in massachusetts eventually established a 35-foot buffer zone, basically a protest-free zone around abortion clinics in part to deal with concerns like those. today the u.s. supreme court struck down the massachusetts law. joining us now, marty walz, former member of the massachusetts state legislature. she s now head of the planned parenthood league of massachusetts. thanks very much for being with us. great to be with you, rachel. first, let me ask you your reaction to today s ruling. a lot of people predicted the law might be in trouble. simply because the court took it up. what do you think of their ruling today? well, of course, we were disappointed. we think the buffer zone law worked very well to maintain a