Clinic Access Bill Targets Terrorist Tactics

George Wang, in his editorial, "Equal Access v. Equal Protection," argues that abortion clinic protesters are being unfairly treated because they will lose the ability to protest peacefully. This conclusion is based on the innocent assumption that the Freedom of Clinic Access bill will prevent such protests. The law, in fact, addresses the right of people to "peacefully demonstrate or picket." For Wang to presume that abortion protesters who are actually behaving in a respectable manner will be hauled off to jail because they are protesting an unpopular position is quite a stretch of logic.

Many of the local clinics in the Boston area have regular protesters who do nothing more than stand outside with a couple of signs and pray. While annoying, these protesters are not the ones that the Clinic Access law is directed towards. It is the terrorist tactics of forcefully blocking clinics and physically intimidating women that need to be stopped.

We do not deny that other groups of people use such tactics. However, we do not believe that a riot in Pittsburgh that involved the United Mine Workers Association implies a crisis of violence here in Massachusetts as Wang would have you believe. Abortion protesters, on the other hand, have greatly increased their physical attacks on clinics, both in number and severity.

This issue has reached such a point that Attorney General Janet Reno has committed herself to combating the violence against clinics from a national level. The Freedom of Clinic Access law will not discriminate against a "helpless" anti-abortion minority as Wang seems to fear. It does, however, protect the right of a woman to have access to an abortion without being physically harassed. Nishe Atre '95   Mike Evers '95   co-presidents, Harvard-Radcliffe Students for Choice