A new law protecting medical facilities including abortion clinics is in effect and visibly in use in Maine.
It creates a "medical safety zone" around "a building in which patients receive health services" in an 8-foot area from the center of that building’s entrance.
If a person knowingly physically obstructs a medical facility’s safety zone, "during the posted hours of operation of the provider of a health service," that person is now committing a crime in the state.
"It extends to other intrusions, such as noise so loud you can’t hear the health care provider or blocking phone lines to a health care facility," said Rep. Jay McCreight, a Democrat from Maine House District 51, who sponsored the initial legislation creating the law.
Get New England news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NECN newsletters.
"I think it accomplishes two things," she said, during a Thursday interview with NECN/NBC 10 Boston.
"It protects the right to free speech, it doesn’t interfere with that and it makes sure that people, when they’re trying to exit or enter a health care facility, including a reproductive health care facility, they can do that without fear of the exit or entrance being blocked," she explained.
McCreight added that her bill was structured the way it is because of the Massachusetts abortion clinic buffer zone law that was struck down by the United States Supreme Court years ago and she thinks other states could use Maine’s law as a model.
"I do hope other states look at this and put it in place,” she said.
As for the law’s future under a different Maine governor, a spokesperson for Republican Paul LePage, Maine’s former governor running to replace Mills, a Democrat, who signed the safety zone bill into law, said, "if it is a law, like any law, LePage would enforce it."
