In the emotionally charged issue of anti-abortion protests, parades and outraged neighbors of physicians targeted by picketers, Bangor councilors should move cautiously in adopting ordinances that regulate the right to free speech and assembly.

For two years, Bangor physicians who perform abortions have been professionally stalked from their practices to their doorsteps by pro-life demonstrators.

The picketers hold graphic signs, designed for their shock value. They offend adults and children. The invasion of their neighborhood by people intent on harassing doctors out of a legal business has forced some residents to turn to the council for help.

The council is addressing the problem in two parts: possible limits on pickets to protect targeted homeowners and neighborhoods; and modifications to the parade ordinance.

Suggestions on the former range from an outright ban on targeted picketing, probably unconstitutional, to increasing the residential-home protected zone mentioned in the ordinance from 100 to 300 feet, which moves but doesn’t remove the problem. The parade issue also is one of crowd control and size. How many people congregated constitute unacceptable interference on a public way? Three? Twenty-five? The first figure is too low, the second probably too high. There’s no magic number. A responsible ordinance designed to manage problem protests probably will split the difference.

The unwelcome sight of grisly pictures of what are described as aborted fetuses on residential streets is an assault on personal privacy and an attack on the tranquility and character of neighborhoods. Even Bangor residents who have never been visually mugged in this manner can agree with Steve Crichton, of Poplar Street, who told a recent meeting of the Municipal Operations Committee, “the whole issue is crazy.”

It sure is.

Legitimately aggrieved residents are asking the council to concoct a municipal ordinance that enforces standards of civil conduct that have been deliberately abandoned by people engaged in graphic guerrilla warfare. That’s a tall order.

Municipal overreaction in this situation will provide protesters with ammunition in the public arena. This will complicate and prolong the debate. If the response is extreme and violates the rights of the pickets, they will seek legal remedies. The city could be slapped with a suit. If it succeeds, an unconstitutional ordinance meant to fix a problem would wind up subsidizing it.

Regardless of their personal sentiments, councilors have an obligation to put emotion aside. Resist the temptation to charge to the rescue of neighborhoods, no matter how good their reason to be upset.

Instead, the council must respond in a firm, prompt and measured manner to forms of harassment and visual pollution that fundamentally are protected by constitutional guarantees of assembly and free speech. The right ordinance will function in the margins of the law. It won’t satisfy everyone, but it will give the city additional leverage to control a situation that is visually ugly, aggravating and yes, more than a little “crazy.”