On Thursday the Supreme Court told Massachusetts that its 35-foot buffer zone around clinics which provide abortions was too big. On Saturday the protesters who used to have to remain behind that line moved closer.

Activists chanted, prayed, and sang during a nonviolent six-hour protest that occasionally erupted into vitriol and shouting.

“Please don’t kill your baby! You can celebrate a birthday next year!” protesters shouted at young women entering the clinic. They waved signs imploring passersby to say no to abortions, some depicting infants nestled serenely in their mothers’ arms, another showing a bloody baby clutched by hands bearing the marks of stigmata.

At its height, the protest drew about 70 people — three times more than the average Saturday morning crowd, typically the largest gathering of the week . . .

[snip]

Since the ruling, said Walz, Planned Parenthood has received many complaints from patients about the protests, and more patients than usual have canceled appointments.

“Our patients and staff are subjected to this extreme, aggressive behavior, but that’s what the Supreme Court thinks is appropriate for the women of this country,” Walz said.

One wonders whether more shootings, bombs or assaults on clinics and their personnel might persuade the Supreme Court justices that going to see a doctor should be allowable behavior. After all, the reason that 35-foot buffer zone was put into effect was to expand a narrower one which had been established after the 1994 murders of two women, receptionists at two different Planned Parenthood clinics in Brookline, Mass.

Hooray for free speech, Justices.