Women seeking reproductive services in Chicago, including abortions, no longer have to run a gauntlet of protestors to get through the clinic doors.

A new ordinance passed by the city in October prohibits protestors from coming within eight feet of anybody trying to enter any healthcare facility. The ordinance applies within a 50-foot "bubble" around the clinic or hospital entrance.

The ordinance's sponsor, Alderman Vi Daley, says the new law is necessary to ensure public safety. "The local police and nearby residents have reported increasingly aggressive tactics [by protestors]," Daley wrote in a statement on her Web site. "The police could not respond to [a] federal law [on which part of the new ordinance is based] and had few, if any, alternative options until an otherwise illegal activity takes place."