A Colorado woman who offers abortion alternatives outside clinics is battling a state law that prohibits her from approaching someone too closely, warning the rule has turned what she considers a compassionate conversation into a legal risk.
Wendy Faustin, a pro-life sidewalk counselor challenging Colorado’s so-called “bubble law,” told Fox News Digital the restrictions prevent her from quietly offering women information about pregnancy resource centers, adoption agencies and other alternatives to abortion.
“If you’re within 100 feet of the entrance to an abortion clinic, I can’t approach someone within 8 feet to give them any alternative information,” Faustin said.
Last July, a federal judge rejected her challenge to the Colorado law. Her case is currently on appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.
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Colorado state law and a Denver municipal ordinance prohibit individuals from knowingly approaching within eight feet of another person without their consent to distribute literature or engage in protest, education or counseling within 100 feet of a health care facility entrance, including abortion clinics. Violations are classified as a petty offense, which carries with it a fine or even a possible short jail sentence.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Colorado’s 1993 law in its 2000 decision in Hill v. Colorado, ruling that the restrictions did not violate the First Amendment.
The restriction, she said, forces her to speak from a distance about an intensely personal subject, potentially allowing others to overhear conversations she would prefer to keep private.
“I would rather be able to just walk up to somebody, offer them alternative information, places where they can get help,” she said.
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“I believe that every woman who is facing this decision deserves to have all the possible information that she might need,” Faustin said. “Sometimes she’s feeling kind of backed into a corner by circumstances or maybe by other people, and she may not be aware that there can be help somewhere for her through a crisis pregnancy center, an adoption agency, and so that’s all the information that I give is offering her information where she can get help and also information about the development of her baby.”
Her attorney, Roger Byron, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, argued the dispute extends far beyond abortion and raises fundamental questions about the First Amendment.
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“These laws literally make it a crime for Wendy to approach within 8 feet of a woman,” Byron told Fox News Digital, describing restrictions he says would not survive constitutional scrutiny if applied to other forms of protest.
“These laws would be struck down immediately if they restricted anti-war protesters or union workers on strike outside of their employer’s facility,” Byron said. “However, because they restrict pro-life sidewalk counselors, they do not. This decision, Hill versus Colorado from the Supreme Court and the statutes that it protects, make sidewalk counselors, because of their pro-life message, second-class citizens. It literally creates two First Amendments. An oppressive one for pro-life sidewalk counselors, and the real one, the good one for everybody else.”
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“What’s at stake is the free speech rights of anyone whose message is something other than what the government wants it to be,” he said.
Byron said the ruling at the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit will determine what happens next.
“I suspect either way, this case is going to end up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court,” Byron said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the office of the Colorado attorney general for comment, and a spokesperson said that the office has no comment beyond its filings.