Efforts to place a “quiet zone” around the Family Planning Associates (FPA) abortion business in Chicago have halted for now, though a buffer zone is still in place.
In November of 2023, Planned Parenthood and Alderman Bill Conway asked the Committee on Public Safety to ban bullhorns, speakers, and other amplification devices from the streets surrounding FPA, saying pro-lifers are “increasingly aggressive” and have been “actively running” towards women while yelling and chanting. Conway claimed pro-lifers are placing amplification devices right next to the FPA building — something even the FPA medical director denied.
“I’ve been inside while this is going on and … you can literally feel the building shake because of this amplified intimidation,” Alderman Conway claimed. “It’s so loud that the staff at the clinic’s intake desk can barely hear what patients are saying to them.”
Eric Scheidler, executive director of Pro-Life Action League, said this is false. “They are lying. There’s no way,” he told Live Action News in November. “They say that the building is shaking. This is a brick building. If this brick building is shaking from someone using a battery-powered megaphone, then they have building code problems on their hands. … They’re lying when they say they can’t hear themselves inside the building. There’s just no way that that’s true.”
READ: Chicago abortion business with history of injuries sends another woman to hospital
Yet Conway has been unsuccessful at passing the ordinance, as it has failed twice in six months. Last week, Ald. Nick Sposato and Ald. Ray Lopez used a parliamentary measure to delay the vote by one meeting. “Further delay of this measure will only seek to heighten this harassment,” Conway said, adding that he will try again a third time. “Do not worry. This delay will not stand. And this will pass. This very constitutional measure.”
Yet Sposato said the opposite, questioning if the ordinance would “silence freedom of speech,” and asked why abortion facilities alone were being “singled out.” Chicago is already an incredibly pro-abortion city, with then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot saying she wanted it to be an “abortion oasis” in 2022.
FPA has a long history of injuring women. At least three women are known to have died there, including a 13-year-old girl, while one of the abortionists has been sued for malpractice 10 times. The city of Chicago, meanwhile, has refused to release 911 records regarding injuries to women at FPA, even though the federal Freedom of Information Act requires these records to be made available once identifying health information has been redacted.
