On Feb. 26, sidewalk pro-life activists won an important legal decision before the U.S. Supreme Court. A stunning 8-1 ruling won plaudits from pro-lifers and caused predictable apoplectic fits among pro-aborts.
After winding its way through the courts for 17 years – including a rare two appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court – the case of NOW v. Scheidler has finally been decided in Scheidler’s favour, ending the long legal ordeal and personal persecution.
The case was launched against pro-life activists Scheidler, Andrew Scholberg, Timothy Murphy – all of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League – and the Operation Rescue organization, by the National Organization of Women and two abortuaries (the National Women’s Health Organization of Summit Inc., and the National Women’s Health Organization of Delaware Inc., claiming to represent all abortion centres) in 1986 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
NOW asserted that PLAL and Operation Rescue (the latter settled with the appellents in 1998) were racketeering enterprises – “members of a nationwide conspiracy to ‘shut down’ abortion clinics through a pattern of racketeering activity that included acts of extortion” – as defined under the Hobbs and Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations acts.
Both acts were enacted to fight organized crime, but civil libertarians have long recognized the laws could be abused and used as politically motivated bludgeons. Indeed, NOW attempted to use them to squelch pro-life activities.
But the Supreme Court would have none of that. The majority decision found that Scheidler et al did not commit extortion because they did not “obtain” property as a result of their activities as required by the Hobbs Act.
Rehnquist wrote: “To conclude that their actions constituted extortion would effectively discard the statutory ‘obtaining’ requirement and eliminate the recognized distinction between extortion and the separate crime of coercion. The latter crime, which more accurately describes the nature of petitioners’ (Scheidler et al) actions, involves the use of force or threat of force to restrict another’s freedom of action.”
Because the court found there to be no RICO violations, it did not address the question of whether private plaintiffs in civil RICO actions were entitled to injunctive relief.
The case has a long, strange history, not the least of which is that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the case to proceed in 1994 after both the District Court and Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the RICO claim because the pro-life activities of PLAL and Operation Rescue, while having an economically deletorious effect on abortuary businesses, were nonetheless not economically motivated. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that RICO does not require proof that either the racketeering enterprise or the predicate acts of racketeering were motivated by an economic purpose, remanded the case to the District Court. This effectively expanded RICO and in subsequent proceedings, the civil jury awarded the abortuaries more than $80,000 in damages, which were trebled because of the RICO indictment. (RICO is designed to be punitive, which is why NOW used it.)
The District Court also ordered a permanent nationwide injunction prohibiting petitioners from obstructing access to abortion facilities, trespassing on abortuary property or otherwise damaging said property, or using violence or threats of violence against abortuaries, their employees or their clients.
In what seems a stunning reversal of its own 1994 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the definition of obtaining property accepted by the Seventh Circuit Court was too expansive. The Supreme Court decision means that Scheidler will not have to pay nearly $250,000 damages and that he may resume pro-life activism. The injunction is lifted.
With typical hyperbole, NOW claimed in a press release that the Supreme Court decision “placed a higher value on tangible property than on women’s liberty.” In what has become a tired mantra of pro-abortion fanatics, NOW said the decision is yet another threat to a woman’s right to kill her unborn child. NOW president Kim Gandy said the ruling benefits “professional criminals,” reperesenting “a banner day for criminal kingpins.”
As its inflammatory, and perhaps slanderous, language illustrates, NOW has no intention of ending harrasment of pro-life activists through legal channels. It claims RICO should protect women and abortuary staff from “a centrally orchestrated violent campaign to close abortion clinics nationwide,” despite the fact that Scheidler and his co-defendents are peaceful activists. To NOW and its allies, praying or holding a sign with a picture of an unborn child is “violent.” Yet it remains silent on what goes on in the slaughterhouses.
The Supreme Court decision is certainly a victory for the pro-life movement, but it was won on narrow technical questions of law. The pro-abortion crowd is determined to continue the harassment of pro-lifers using numerous other pieces of legislation such as federal, and increasingly state-level, Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances acts.
More worrisome is NOW’s statement that, “We will use whatever is at our disposal to see to it that religious and political extremists do not resume their reign of terror at women’s clinics. We are looking at every avenue available to us to protect women, doctors and clinic staff from these ideological terrorists.” This is being read as a threat to misuse the Patriot Act which was passed in post-September 11 Washington and which critics say limits civil liberties under ill-defined “security threats.”
The abortion lobby is desperate. As Operation Rescue national director Rev. Flip Benham noted, the reason NOW pursued the “unconstitutional” use of RICO to silence pro-lifers is because, “It is losing the battle for the lives of unborn children and it knows it.”
