Massachusetts Buffer Zone

Floor Speech

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, since 1973, when the Supreme Court decided that a woman's right to choose was constitutionally protected, women's health clinics across the country have been targeted by violence and other criminal activities by extremists.

The crimes are alarming: harassment, arson, acid attacks, obstruction, violent threats, and even murder. Women's safety has been repeatedly put at risk simply for exercising a constitutional right.

In the past 10 years, there have been approximately 75,000 incidents of violence against abortion providers in the United States. That is unacceptable. We should always remember that each of these victims of violence has a name, a family, and a story.

In 1994, a gunman killed two people and wounded five others at two clinics in Massachusetts. One of these victims was 25-year-old Shannon Lowney, a daughter of public schoolteachers, a beloved sister, and a volunteer who worked domestically and internationally with poor families and children.

Shannon worked as a receptionist and Spanish translator at Planned Parenthood in Brookline, MA. She worked there not for the pay but because she fundamentally believed women had a right to affordable health care. She wanted to do her part to ensure that patients at a vulnerable and stressful time in life were greeted with a smile. Five days after Christmas in 1994 she was fatally shot in the neck at a Planned Parenthood clinic by an extremist protester.

Shannon's story is just one of the many tragedies caused by violence against women exercising their rights.

In 2007, after the laws on the books proved inadequate, Massachusetts ensured that there would be fair and balanced laws that created a buffer zone of 35 feet around the entry of reproductive health care facilities.

This law was intended to protect people such as Shannon and the thousands of women and staff who visit and work at clinics.

The buffer zone law worked. Massachusetts women could exercise their fundamental right to health care without running a gauntlet of abuse. According to a survey of reproductive health care centers across the country, a majority of facilities with buffer zones experienced a decrease in criminal activity after the buffer zone was instituted.

Today the Supreme Court of the United States took away those buffer zones of safety when it struck down the Massachusetts buffer zone law, effectively undoing the historic progress we have made in ensuring that women are protected when accessing reproductive health care and exercising their constitutional rights.

Today's Supreme Court ruling puts women at risk simply for exercising their constitutional rights. Shannon's brother Liam visited me on the day that this case was argued before the Supreme Court. Their family is representative of what has happened across this country in terms of the endangerment of women when they seek to exercise their constitutional rights.

So today is a sad day. It is not just a sad day for America but in particular for Shannon's family because they put a lot on the line to ensure that this case was brought before the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Court's decision makes it more difficult for States to guarantee women's reproductive rights and more likely that acts of violence and intimidation against women seeking reproductive health care will occur.

With reproductive rights under attack across the country like never before, it is imperative that we ensure the basic safety of all women and staff at Planned Parenthood and other health facilities.

We should be expanding access to safe reproductive health care for women, not restricting it. That is unfortunately what today is going to represent in the history of health care for women in our country.

The Presiding Officer is a national leader on these issues, fighting for the rights of women. I stand with her and with the other Members of the Senate but, more importantly, also with ordinary families across this country and Planned Parenthood and all the women in Massachusetts and this country who believe every woman seeking reproductive health care should be safe and protected.

I am proud that all Massachusetts law enforcement officials will continue to use every legal tool available to ensure the safety and privacy of women and clinic staff. Today is a historic day. Unfortunately, it is one of which our country should not be proud.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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