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Top court lifts
national ban on abortion-clinic protests
BY
ANNE GEARAN,
AP nj.com from the Web, February 27, 2003
WASHINGTON -- In a
victory for abortion foes, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that federal
racketeering and extortion laws were wrongly used to try to stop blockades,
harassment and violent protests outside clinics.
The 8-1 ruling lifts a
nationwide ban on protests that interfere with abortion clinic business.
Abortion rights supporters said they fear that the ruling will lead to a reprise
of screaming matches and physical confrontations outside clinics.
Anti-abortion leader
Joseph Scheidler predicted renewed activism at clinics but said the protests
will be peaceful.
"They will be mostly
prayer vigils and counseling," said Scheidler, who appealed the case to the
Supreme Court. "The old days of Operation Rescue, I think, are pretty well
finished. I don't see any reason to resurrect that -- the arrests and so forth."
Women's organizations and
abortion rights supporters were unconvinced.
"This opinion is a green
light to the people who have been orchestrating this violence behind the scenes
to proceed full speed ahead," said Kim Gandy, president of the National
Organization for Women. "What it means is that again women will be putting their
bodies on the line to protect the clinics and patients."
Other women's
organizations said the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act largely
protects women from the worst kinds of harassment outside clinics. The law
requiring protesters to keep their distance was passed eight years after NOW
sued Scheidler and other abortion opponents in federal court.
Richard Collier,
president of the Morristown, N.J.-based Legal Center for the Defense of Life,
called the ruling "a great victory not just for the pro-life movement but for
social and political protesters in general."
Collier said that if the
justices had left the threat of a racketeering lawsuit dangling over protesters,
it would have been enough to deter many ordinary citizens from "expressing their
conscience in public. That's a wonderful American thing and it shouldn't be
criminalized as though you were a racketeer."
But Elizabeth Volz,
president of the New Jersey chapter of the National Organization for Women, said
the ruling sends "a bad message."
Phyllis Kinsler,
president of Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey, said: "Obviously we're
disappointed at anything the violent opposition will interpret as a win."
Yesterday's ruling ends a
fight that produced an unlikely alliance of abortion foes and liberal activists
worried that racketeering and extortion laws could be used to trample free
speech across the political spectrum.
The Supreme Court limited
its review to legal questions about application of federal law. It did not
consider the legality or constitutionality of abortion itself, nor wider
questions about the political or religious messages of the abortion protesters.
NOW and two abortion
clinics had tried for 17 years to shut down protests by using a federal law
originally intended to target mobsters. Abortion providers claimed the
coordinated effort to close down or disrupt clinics in several cities in the
1980s went far beyond the actions of individual protesters, and should be
treated much like organized crime.
Huge abortion protests in
Buffalo and other places went on for weeks, drew large crowds and produced
scores of arrests. Televised images showed shouting protesters rushing women who
tried to enter clinics, while counter-protesters tried to open corridors for
patients.
The NOW lawsuit alleged
that protesters menaced doctors, roughed up patients and trashed clinics.
Protesters shoved women against a plate glass window, glued shut clinic doors
and broke medical equipment, NOW claimed.
The Supreme Court
previously had ruled that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
could be applied to abortion protesters, and the question this time was whether
the law was used correctly.
Chief Justice William
Rehnquist, writing for the court majority, said it was not.
The law requires a
conclusion that someone has committed an underlying crime, in this case
extortion. The court reversed a lower court ruling on that point, finding that
protesters did not extort money or valuables from the clinics when they tried to
disrupt business.
There is no dispute that
abortion protesters interfered with clinic operations and in some cases
committed crimes, Rehnquist wrote.
"But even when their acts
of interference and disruption achieved their ultimate goal of 'shutting down' a
clinic that performed abortions, such acts did not constitute extortion," he
said.
Justice John Paul Stevens
was the lone dissenter. He called the majority ruling murky and needlessly
narrow. Federal extortion law was meant to be read more broadly, Stevens wrote.
Staff writer Robert
Schwaneberg contributed to this report
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