New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a lawsuit last week against several pro-life sidewalk counselors, seeking to stop their activities and enact a 16-foot buffer zone around an abortion center.

Schneiderman’s suit claims sidewalk counselors “repeatedly harassed, threatened, and menaced patients, families, escorts, and clinic staff at the Choices Women’s Medical Center in Jamaica, Queens.”

He called their actions “horrifying” and “illegal” and claimed they made death threats to escorts, chased patients approaching the facility, leaned into cars to distribute pro-life literature, and blocked the paths of people seeking abortion with 3-by-5-foot signs depicting aborted babies. 

The attorney for the pro-life advocates, who are associated with Church at the Rock in Brooklyn, disputes those claims.

“Members of the Church at the Rock peacefully counsel women who are considering having an abortion. They conduct themselves reasonably and compassionately, and offer information about abortion alternatives to those willing to listen,” Thomas More Society’s Andrew Bath said in a statement. “This is the exercise of their core First Amendment rights and is an activity that takes place on the public sidewalk, the traditional venue for expression concerning important ideas and societal issues.”

Bath said Schneiderman’s suit isn’t factual and lacks legal basis.

For at least five years, pro-life advocates have met on Saturday mornings in front of the facility to protest abortion. The legal action last week follows complaints from workers at the Choices facility and an investigation initiated by Schneiderman last June.

The lawsuit also claims the pro-lifers violated New York City’s existing 15-foot buffer zone that bans protesters from approaching people within 15 feet of an abortion facility entrance. It also calls for a 16-foot buffer zone around the Choices facility and requests an injunction against the pro-lifers’ “protest activity.”

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law encircling abortion centers with a 35-foot buffer zone. The justices ruled buffer zones could not restrict access to public streets and sidewalks. But they did not overturn a previous decision upholding buffer zones in general as “content neutral.”