by Detroit — The Detroit City Council could vote as early as Tuesday on a proposed ordinance that would create “bubble zones” around health care facilities, preventing people from protesting within 15 feet of a facility and limiting certain interactions to 100 feet.
Although the ordinance does not specify facilities that would allow abortions, the measure has become a showdown between abortion advocates and opponents of the procedure, who say Detroit’s proposed policy goes too far. Dozens of people from both sides of the issue spoke about the policy during a council committee hearing on Monday before it was voted on to go to the full council on Tuesday.
Many critics who spoke at Monday’s meeting said they were “shame counselors,” meaning people who approach women outside clinics to convince them not to have an abortion.
Monica Miller said she has been a sidewalk counselor outside Detroit clinics for decades.
“I’ve gotten a lot of women out of abortions,” she said. “We approach the mothers, we guide them to show them love and compassion. We must be able to talk to them in a human way, without this artificial 2.5 meter zone.
“If there’s an incident here and there, we can’t use a sledgehammer because things can happen every now and then,” Miller said.
If approved, the ordinance would establish two types of “bubble zones” around health care facilities, a term referring to designated areas intended to create physical or spatial separation between two or more entities or activities.
One bubble zone would be a 30 meter radius from the entrance of a healthcare facility, where people would not be able to come within 2.5 meters of another person. The other zone would be a 15-foot radius where people would be prohibited from congregating, patrolling, protesting or demonstrating in front of the entrance – with the exception of emergency response, public safety and security personnel.
Emma Howland-Bolton of Detroit pointed out that many of the opponents who spoke Monday said they did not live in the city.
“We have overwhelming white male protesters who don’t live in Detroit who … travel to our city specifically to target women in Detroit, and … tell these women what they can and cannot do and make them feel unsafe,” said he. Howland-Bolton, who supports the ordinance.
After hearing about two hours of public comment, Detroit City Council members Gabriela Santiago-Romero, Scott Benson and Mary Waters voted to refer the proposed ordinance to the full council, which could take action as soon as Tuesday based on the measure.
Benson said what he didn’t hear during dozens of public comments Monday was how an “8- to 15-foot buffer would stop the expression of free speech.” He added: “It’s just protective.” He added that other rural municipalities have similar protection zones for institutions offering psychiatric services.
Santiago-Romero, who introduced the proposed initiative, said she had evidence that women and others were harassed outside the facilities by anti-abortion advocates. She visited a health care clinic in Detroit on Saturday and as she walked to the entrance, a “man in his early 20s, without asking me anything, said, ‘I’m here to save your baby. Please don’t kill your baby.'” Santiago-Romero is not pregnant, she said.
“In those moments I was numb, I couldn’t say anything. I felt overwhelmed,” she said.
During the meeting, she held up a notebook that she said was “full of examples” of people being harassed by protesters outside facilities, as well as photos of protesters’ vehicle with out-of-state license plates.
“We have people coming from out of town telling our residents what to do with our bodies,” Santiago-Romero said. “And honestly, it’s not all peaceful.”
