This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, October 7th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

This term, the Supreme Court will hear about the degree to which people may be prohibited from getting close to abortion clinics

and how they may interact with people trying to enter.

Commenting in the case of McCullen v Coakley is Trevor Burris, research fellow with the Cato Institute, you can read Cato's brief in a case at our website

Cato.org.

We're talking about public places, public space that people might use to engage in freedom if you will but of course this what has brought

this case to attention is the fact that it is surrounds abortion

of course the Massachusetts passed a law that makes it illegal to be within 35 feet of an abortion clinic

unless you're an officer, someone going into the clinic or someone using it as a right of way.

But if you wanted to play Parchezee on the grass outside of an abortion clinic, that is illegal in Massachusetts right now if you're within the 35 foot zone.

And this was passed with a clear motive to try and curtail people who wanted to give information

to women going into abortion clinics.

In this case, the plaintiffs are actually just old women, older women, I think they're

in their 80s, and they had pamphlets.

They believe that women going to get abortions are not fully

aware of the options that are available to them so they didn't get you know violent with them

or battery them or anything they just gave them little

pamphlets and so Massachusetts passed this law not specifically for them but

for people like them and we filed a brief to try and explain to the court that

this is not about abortion.

If you can get past that, if it were Nazis, that if the problem were Nazis protesting,

...