Maine state government sues to stop unhinged anti-abortion protester from screaming at clinic

The attorney general of the state of Maine has filed suit against an individual anti-abortion protester whose screams are so loud that they are audible inside the Portland Planned Parenthood building.

According to the Portland Press-Herald, Brian Ingalls is the target of a lawsuit issued by state Attorney General Janet Mills which prohibits the 26-year-old evangelical Christian protester from coming within 50 feet of the clinic.

Ingalls, says the suit, violated the Maine Civil Rights Act because his loud and insistent protests on Oct. 23 interfered with "the exercise of enjoyment of any other person of rights secured by the Constitution of the United States or the State of Maine or the laws of the United States or the State of Maine."

Ingalls stood outside the Portland clinic and screamed for hours about "murdering babies, aborted babies’ blood and Jesus," said the Press-Herald.

According to the lawsuit:

Sgt. Eric Nevins of the Portland Police Deprtment responded to the facility’s complaint about the noise. Sgt. Nevins ordered Defendant Ingalls to lower his voice so that he would not be audible to patients receiving health services inside the facility,” the four-page complaint states. “Defendant Ingalls’ persistence after a warning in yelling at such a volume that he could be heard within the building demonstrates his intent to interfere with the safe and effective delivery of health services at Planned Parenthood.

Maine has a state law banning noises loud enough to be heard within buildings where medical procedures are being performed when the aim of that noise is to "jeopardize the health of persons receiving health services or to interfere with the safe and effective delivery of those services."

“All patients have the right to receive medical services free of ‘the cacophony of political protests,’ in the words of the United States Supreme Court,” said Mills in a statement. “While protestors have every right to say anything they want in a public area in the vicinity of a medical facility, they are not permitted to disrupt another citizen’s health care services.”