Maine officials have filed a lawsuit against a pro-life pastor who has preached and played worship music outside a Planned Parenthood clinic for years,
They are seeking to bar him from the area under the state’s Civil Rights Act and buffer zone laws aimed at protecting abortion.
The state sued John Andrade Jr., a preacher from Brunswick, on August 21, alleging his activities at the Planned Parenthood facility on Newbury Street violate provisions prohibiting noise audible inside health care facilities that interferes with services. The lawsuit demands an immediate injunction to keep Andrade at least 150 feet away from any Planned Parenthood site and to prevent any noise that can be heard inside.
As they know, if women considering abortions heard they music and preaching, they may choose life instead and Planned Parenthood would lose money.
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Andrade, who has protested outside the clinic since 2021 to share messages of love, salvation through Jesus and opposition to abortion, called the suit an overreach.
“There’s many days when I don’t say a word about abortion; we’re just playing music and not preaching at all. Sometimes preaching just general concepts and things from the Bible and, sometimes we’ll be a little bit more pointed with our content about abortion, but there’s never an intent that we’re trying to disrupt health care. So I feel like it’ll be a stretch for them to try to prove that,” Andrade said.
The case highlights tensions in Maine, a state that allows abortions up to birth, including so-called “medical safety zones” enacted in 2022 that restrict pro-life advocates exercising their free speech rights outside abortion centers. Planned Parenthood has marked the zones with green lines on sidewalks near its Portland location.
Andrade has received multiple police warnings to quiet down during his protests but was never charged after a 2021 criminal trespass notice for allegedly blocking the entrance, which he denies.
“It’s certainly not true that I blocked the entrance, and they wouldn’t have any evidence supporting that,” he said.
He argued the state’s enforcement is selective, noting that other loud protests — including anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement demonstrations with chanting and drums in the same neighborhood — have gone unchallenged.
“No other loud noise near Monument Square is being opposed, only ours. And it appears that they are able to perform abortions just fine even in a loud environment,” Andrade said.
The pastor emphasized that his core message is one of moral urgency against what he knows is the taking of innocent lives.
“In my understanding, it seems that ‘noise’ is not Planned Parenthood’s issue with me. Instead, they are opposed to the message of love and salvation through Jesus, along with our message that killing children in the womb is a great evil, and that the lives of these human children in the womb matter,” he said.
