UB Law Professor Lucinda Finley to argue case on abortion clinic protest limits before Supreme Court

By SUE WUETCHER
News Services Associate Director

The case, Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York, which involves limits on protests at Western New York abortion clinics, has attracted all sorts of national media attention. Finley said she's spoken with ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Court TV and National Public Radio.

Although Finley said she was "not nervous yet," she did admit to having a case of "adrenaline-kind of nerves, like a prizefighter waiting to go into the ring."

This will not be Finley's first trip to the nation's highest court, however. In addition to writing several amicus briefs in significant women's-rights and reproductive-rights cases, she wrote the brief and served as co-counsel when her father argued a taxation case before the court in 1991.

The arguments next week are the culmination of six years' work for Finley, who is spending the fall semester at the Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Illinois at Chicago as a recipient of a prestigious Women's Health Policy Fellowship.

She commenced the Schenck case in 1990 on behalf of area abortion providers and the Pro-Choice Network, and obtained an injunction to thwart an ongoing series of blockades of abortion clinics. This injunction played a significant role during the "Spring of Life" protests organized by Operation Rescue in Buffalo in 1992 when Finley used the injunction to initiate successful criminal contempt prosecutions of blockade leaders.

She has shepherded this injunction-which provides a 15-foot buffer zone around clinics and limits on "counseling" by anti-abortion protesters -through two appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and now to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Since the case involves the limits that may be placed on protesters consistent with the First Amendment, Finley believes it has serious implications for colleges and universities, as well as abortion clinics.

Finley said her time was totally consumed with the Schenck case during the spring and the summer, up until the brief was filed on July 1. Writing the brief, which outlines her side's argument in writing-was, in a word, "intense."

Life has been a little less hectic since, although she did return to Buffalo in mid-September to attend a fund-raiser for the Pro-Choice Network and traveled to Washington a few days later to attend a press briefing on the case sponsored by the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense Fund.

But things will begin to heat up again soon. She has two moot arguments scheduled, one in New York City on Oct. 11, and another in Washington on Oct. 14. On Oct. 15, she will spend time with lawyers from the U.S. Justice Department, which is supporting her position, and take measurements of the courtroom to help the justices better visualize the 15-foot buffer zone.