PHOENIX — Police say a man pulled a gun on a woman standing outside a Planned Parenthood in Phoenix Wednesday morning.

July 1st, 2009 UNCUT: Police say man pointed gun at Planned Parenthood protester – A man pulled a gun on a protester outside a Planned Parenthood in Phoenix Wednesday morning.

Phoenix police Lt. Larry T. Jacobs said the man had just dropped his girlfriend off at the Planned Parenthood near Seventh and Campbell avenues. As he was leaving, one of the women outside handed him a pamphlet.

That’s when the suspect pulled a gun on the woman, pointed it at her for a few seconds and then drove off.

The victim was able to write down his license plate number and called police.

She says she was only trying to help.

Police found the man and arrested him.

No one was hurt

Probably not, unlikely, and highly unlikely.

Please do continue offering alternatives at your own locations. Get a phone number and rent a storefront. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

You know that I always stand up for freedom of speech. Once you allow government to gore on guy’s ox, it won’t be long before it comes for your cow. I will always jealously guard those precious rights.

The fact is noman there is no anger from our side 99% of the time. I wouldn’t spend 10 seconds anywhere where angry behavior is tolerated except to reign it in. Some people have issues quite apart from any thing dealing with this. We already have laws to deal with them. What this law does is try to stop the peaceful offer of alternatives in any meaningful way. Imagine an 8 foot bubble at the polling place or DMV.

Free speech doesn’t mean you get to stand silently outside your ex-wife’s door.

If we were talking about corporate executives or politicians, you might have a point about peaceful protest. But these are medical patients and medical workers who are there for their own private reasons.

There are lots of people visiting a women’s health facility for reasons other than abortion which are nonetheless private. For example, you probably don’t know or care that Planned Parenthood does fertility counselling and pre-natal care as well as regular GYN checkups and STD screening and treatment. Heck, they even treat men.

I don’t see this bill as being about abortion. What I see it being about is trying to use big government to put a restriction on freedom of speech and assembly that does not exist upon any other class of people in this state. It is view point discrimination. If the bill stopped at the first paragraph, we would not be having this discussion. I would still oppose it, but it would not be worth a big fight. It is already illegal to stop a business by blocking its entrance.

Thank God for Google. In the Kokinda case, the Supreme Court permitted the postal service to enforce a rule against asking (soliciting) for donations on postal property. In that case, political activists were asking for donations while standing on a sidewalk leading from the post office building to the post office parking lot.
However, the court suggested that it would reject a rule that banned free distribution of literature on such properties. Discussing the difference, the Court said,

As residents of metropolitan areas know from daily experience, confrontation by a person asking for money disrupts passage and is more intrusive and intimidating than an encounter with a person giving out information. One need not ponder the contents of a leaflet or pamphlet in order mechanically to take it out of someone’s hand, but one must listen, comprehend, decide and act in order to respond to a solicitation.

ISKCON, Inc. v. Lee applied the same type of philosophy to an airport which was not public property.