Freedom to Shame

by Bruce Schimmel

³It’s disgraceful. It’s intimidation. And I won’t deny it takes an emotional toll,” says Dayle Steinberg, who heads the local Planned Parenthood, about tactics used against women seeking abortions.

One-on-one confrontation is nothing new outside their facility on Locust Street, but now public shame through an invasion of privacy is being added to the arsenal of anti-abortionists. Something called the Christian Gallery News Service is extending the battle to cyberspace, through a new site, www.abortioncams.com. This new site publishes pictures of men and women who enter and exit abortion facilities across the country.

Neal Horsley, who runs the site, claims that women will be less likely to seek abortions if they know there is a possibility that their pictures might be published "where friends and family and the whole world might see it."

As a "news service," Horsley claims to have the "full protection of the First Amendment freedom of the press," and invites volunteer "reporters" across the country to go to their "local butchertorium," take pictures and upload them to his site.

"Horsley and his cohorts are within their rights to take whatever pictures they want on public property," affirms Planned Parenthood's Steinberg.

“The right to privacy is not in the Constitution,” says Steinberg, not without some irony. The legality of abortion itself has been ruled to be an issue of privacy, a judgment that could shift suddenly if the makeup of the Supreme Court changes.

"My real dread," says Steinberg, "is that it gets overturned and it comes back to such Œprogressive' states like Pennsylvania." Steinberg believes that having a Democrat governor in Pennsylvania would be the best insurance against losing a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy.

That, plus the fact that the majority of people believe that abortion should remain legal.

Pictures of the Locust Street Planned Parenthood have yet to be posted on the Web, though there are dozens of photos from other clinics across Pennsylvania -- pictures of women and of men, along with photos of license plates. Several of the people are giving the finger to the photographers.

Steinberg says they're ready with a legion of people to escort women to and from their facility. "These attacks strengthen the resolve of our staff and supporters.

"But we won't fight back using the weapons of fear and intimidation that they use against us."

Instead, she says, Planned Parenthood will be employing another instrument of the First Amendment in its defense. They intend to shield their clients with newspapers.

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July 14, 2005
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