BY JOE MARUSAK AND LAUREN LINDSTROM
Police on Saturday charged eight Charlotte abortion protesters with violating North Carolina’s COVID-19-related ban on mass gatherings. The arrests went national late Saturday when U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas criticized Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police.
“This is an unconstitutional arrest,” Cruz, a runner-up for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2016 election, tweeted. “@BenhamBrothers exercising core First Amendment rights. PEACEFULLY. In a way fully consistent w/ public safety. Because elected Dems are pro-abortion, they are abusing their power—in a one-sided way—to silence pregnancy counselors.”
About 50 protesters gathered outside A Preferred Women’s Health Center on Latrobe Drive, according to police. The center has been the scene of numerous abortion protests over the years.
That size crowd violates the mass gatherings provision in the state’s stay-at-home order, police said, so officers asked everyone to leave. “After an initial request for compliance, 12 people who were in violation refused to leave” and were cited under state law for violation of emergency prohibitions and restrictions, according to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department news release.
Several days before Saturday’s arrests, Calla Hales, executive director of the clinic, told the Observer in an interview that protesters continued to show up at the Latrobe location despite increasing restrictions on gatherings during the March.
Calling it “a public health nightmare,” Hales said the protesters were not following social distancing during previous protests, and did not wear gloves or masks when they approached patients coming into the clinic to speak with them, distribute literature and to try to convince them not to have an abortion. Read more via Charlotte Observer