Protesters outside the private office of Dr. Yashica Robinson in Huntsville, Alabama, captured by a Google Maps Street View photographer.

In another offensive against women’s rights to health care and bodily autonomy, opponents of abortion care have sued the city of Huntsville, Alabama, claiming violation of their First Amendment rights to free speech. The protesters stand outside both the Alabama Women’s Center, the sole clinic providing abortion care in the north of the state, and the private office of Dr. Yashica Robinson, the gynecologist who provides care at the clinic. They hold signs and yell at anyone who enters either building, and have been doing so for many years under the protection of a “special events permit” from the city that allows them to “sidewalk counsel” visitors, as their lawsuit against the city puts it.

The protesters are suing the city, as well as the city’s police department, on the grounds that new provisions in the permits issued by the city limit the volume at which they can do their yelling, thereby violating their free speech rights. The new language in the permit specifies that “[t]he amplified sound produced by a participant in the event shall not be plainly audible inside adjacent or nearby buildings.” Josie Poland, a clinic escort in Huntsville, noted that the protesters’ yelling is clearly audible to staff and patients inside the clinic. Poland told AL.com, “I have no words for their sense of entitlement. They think their free speech grants them the right to have an audience. I don’t think the First Amendment grants them the right to have an audience.”

The lawyers for the plaintiffs listed in the suit are Matthew James Clark of Roy Moore’s Christian right-wing Foundation For Moral Law and Samuel Jacob McLure, who has acted as special counsel to the right-wing Thomas More Society, suggesting that those organizations see this case as more than just a local complaint in Huntsville.

The Alabama Women’s Center is already facing a lawsuit that seeks to hold it responsible for a “wrongful death” resulting from an abortion carried out at the clinic in 2017. While it doesn’t directly target the clinic, this new lawsuit is clearly another volley by anti-abortion activists in their war to eliminate abortion care in the state of Alabama by making it too costly, difficult, and dangerous for providers to continue their legal work.

The Alabama Women’s Center is one of only three clinics providing abortion care, as well as other vital health services, in Alabama. If you feel moved to help the center in its struggle to survive and to continue to offer care to vulnerable and desperate patients in the state, you can donate to a GoFundMe drive the center’s owner has set up to help cover its legal expenses.