Posted on 04/26/2009 12:05:03 PM PDT by wagglebee
City officials and frustrated neighbors are trying to figure out whether a group of abortion opponents is violating Bellevue's new picketing ordinance with its "truth truck."
The truck displays huge, graphic photos of aborted fetuses, and protesters have been repeatedly driving it through the neighborhood of a woman who works at an abortion clinic.
Many residents of the Nob Hill neighborhood near Virginia Avenue and North Fourth Street are fed up with the truck. One lay down in front of the truck this week to prevent it from re-entering the street in front of their houses. He later was arrested.
Larry Donlan, director of Rescue the Heartland, which opposes abortion, said Bellevue residents should expect to see him and other protesters more this spring and summer. The group plans to protest in the neighborhood a couple of times a month for at least an hour.
Donlan said the mobile protests not only are legal but also are the only way the group can picket without violating the new ordinance, passed in November.
"I don't like the law either. The whole thing is unfair to the neighbors," he said. "We are just obeying the law."
The ordinance, modeled after a measure in Lincoln and brought to the Bellevue City Council by Police Chief John Stacey, dictates that if protesters target a specific house, they must stay at least 75 feet away.
Before the new ordinance went into effect, Donlan said, protesters would kneel and pray on the sidewalk in front of a clinic worker's home for about an hour.
Several protesters were arrested in 2006 and '07 and cited
on suspicion of violating state laws on disturbing the peace and picketing. Donlan and three other anti-abortion protesters recently won a federal lawsuit against Bellevue and Sarpy County that claimed the arrests violated their free-speech rights and that the disturbing the peace and unlawful picketing laws were unconstitutional as applied to the protests.
In resolving the lawsuit, Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov and Stacey agreed not to arrest or charge protesters under the state laws as long as they were engaged in peaceful residential protests.
Stacey has said he pushed for the new city ordinance because he felt law enforcement's hands were tied in trying to deal with the protests. He said he and other city officials are looking into whether the truck is a violation.
"But we want to walk cautiously," he said. "It's a bit sketchy when someone is using a public right of way."
Stacey said the new ordinance should ease problems in neighborhoods, while protecting protesters and neighbors.
"We have a solid law to follow," he said.
Donlan said the group is trying to comply with the new ordinance's restrictions.
"The only way to keep it neutral is to keep moving . . . on foot or in the truck,'' he said. "The City Council brought this on themselves. We are just obeying the law that they passed."
Steve Spurgeon got so tired of Donlan driving the truck through the neighborhood Tuesday that he lay down in the street in front of the truck, police said. Stacey said protesters called police, who ordered Spurgeon several times to get up. After he refused, he was arrested on suspicion of failing to obey a police officer's order. Spurgeon did not return messages left at his home.
Donlan also was cited on suspicion of driving with an expired license.
Sherry Hron, director of nursing at the Abortion and Contraception Clinic of Nebraska in Bellevue, said she sees the problem only getting worse. She knows she's the reason protesters come to her neighborhood.
"If the City of Bellevue doesn't do something, this is going to become a serious problem," she said. "They can picket me all day long at the clinic, but coming into our neighborhood? That is our safe haven, and they are taking that away."
She has found support among her neighbors.
Wanda Zielinski, 64, and Mary Kay Peek, 66, both said the protesters should leave Hron alone.
"They're trying to get this lady to quit her job," Peek said. "She has the right to work."
Michelle Routt, 50, has lived on North Fourth Street for 22 years and she isn't looking forward to this summer. Last summer, she had to keep her nieces and nephews out of her front yard to shield them from the protesters' images of an aborted fetus.
"It's offensive," she said. "There's a lot of children in this neighborhood. They shouldn't have to see that."
While I agree that the images are offensive, what people need to realize is that these images portray what ACTUALLY HAPPENS to an American baby EVERY 24 SECONDS.
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Traumatizing kids that have nothing to do with it isn’t going to help.
It’s always amazed me when abortion supporters are aghast at the “offensive” images on display. They support it! They support creating those “offensive” images! Ya just want to slap them sometimes.
What do you suggest?
Really? One of the key reasons that the Vietnam War was so unpopular is that people saw images of it every night on the news.
How about NOT deliberately traumatizing kids that have nothing to do with it? Just a thought.
Did they park giant pictures of dismembered babies in front of schools?
Quit dodging.
How, precisely?
What exactly are you asking (So I can be specific with my answer);
How to stop abortion without traumatizing random kids?
If driving the truck around isn’t constitutionally protected free speech, then the 1st amendment is dead.
No, it said that the truck drives through an abortionist’s neighborhood.
I am not disputing that the images are offensive, they are meant to be offensive. But what is more offensive are the millions who are not offended by the act itself.
I asked about the latter.
But why don’t you tackle both?
Guess what? If America's children are sufficiently traumatized by abortion, the current holocaust will eventually end.
They also like to park/pass by schools. The people who do this are sick.
You means the abortionists, right?
The nurse only lives about 1 1/2 mile from me. I’ve seen the images they are displaying and yes they are disturbing but the way it is being done is perfectly within the law.
These images are exactly what those neighbors need to see. I have never taken a religious point of view of this since I don’t adhere to any denomination and religious approach won’t sway most of these people anyway.
I take a scientific point of view with a knowledge of biological development in the womb and that viability outside the womb has been steadily pushed back over the years due to medical advances. These people need to understand that a beating heart is a live being and that by the time most mothers know they are pregnant their baby has a beating heart and is a live being. Seeing a full term or near full term baby that has been killed on purpose needs to be shoved in their faces at every turn. Their kids need to know that but for one fortunate decision made by their parents they could have ended up as one of those images.
I’d love to discuss this with you.
I said “Traumatizing kids that have nothing to do with it isn’t going to help.”
You said “What do you suggest?”
Can you phrase your question more specifically, so that I can answer very specifically?
Have you ever stopped to wonder WHY these images even exist?
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