The U.S. Supreme Court ruling which found Joe Scheidler and two other pro-lifers guilty under federal anti-racketeering laws holds a lesson for those concerned with the progress of civil rights.

Scheidler, head of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League, was found guilty of extortion April 20 in a 12-year-old court action initiated by the National Organization for Women (NOW). The verdict opens the door for other abortion clinic operators to sue pro-life groups on the grounds that protest, picketing, prayer vigils and the like constitute an organized conspiracy to restrict trade in the abortion industry.

Scheidler has vowed to carry on his pro-life efforts in spite of the verdict. Nonetheless, the spectre of crippling financial penalties hangs over his Pro-Life Action League and other right-to-life organizations.

Many have noted the irony of NOW’s attempt to curtail free speech and civil rights through the application of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law. The RICO law, under which Scheidler was found guilty, was drawn up to combat organized crime and drug cartel operations. Few anticipated the law could be turned against pro-life interests. Not only has NOW seized on RICO to stifle pro-lifers, it has also found a way to bankrupt the entire right-to-life movement.

But more than that, the decision reflects how notions as important as civil rights and free speech can receive differing treatment depending on the mood of the courts and the media’s perception of the cause in question.

This tendency to play favorites with civil rights has enormous implications for pro-life supporters, especially when one considers some of the underlying reasons pro-lifers’ civil rights have been suppressed. Abortion supporters, including NOW, have argued pro-life activity is a form of violence, and that incidents of harassment of abortionists are the norm. As well, feminists and the liberal media get tremendous mileage when an abortionist is wounded, or when a clinic is firebombed – this despite an overwhelming lack of evidence these acts of violence are in any way connected to the mainstream pro-life movement.

But if one wants to look at violence, it is interesting to compare the drive for civil rights in the U.S. during the 1960s and the present day actions of pro-lifers. Thirty years ago, violence, property damage and even death were commonplace – almost taken for granted – in the midst of efforts to end years of inequality and racial strife. Yet at no time did liberals and feminists of the day speak of an organized conspiracy, nor did they enlist federal law to silence Martin Luther King and his supporters. Yet in 1998, the pro-lifers are stigmatized by isolated acts of violence, short-sighted jurists lose their perspective and prayer vigils outside abortion clinics are regarded with unfounded fear.

Thomas Roeser, an editorial writer with the biweekly newspaper River North News, has observed this anomaly.

“Some (anti-abortion) extremists – far fewer than existed in civil rights struggles – have taken lives and destroyed property for which they should be given the maximum punishment under law,” Roeser says. “But throttling free speech because of a danger of incipient violence … is far more serious.”

Roeser wonders why a legal system that was so tolerant of protest, violence and civil disobedience for the sake of racial equality, would now cripple legitimate pro-life action on the basis of flimsy, unsubstantiated threats of “anti-choice extremism.”

Dennis Byrne, columnist for the Chicago Sun Times says civil disobedience and the threat of boycott and other economic pressure were the coin of the civil rights and women’s movements in the 1960s and 70s. Strange, he notes, that not once in those days did anyone suggest the full force of anti-racketeering law be turned against civil rights protestors, even those openly promoting violence.

Any Canadians who are concerned with the erosion of civil liberties should also take note of the Scheidler-RICO case. Abortion supporters in the U.S. have succeeded in convincing the courts that pro-life picketing is a conspiracy. In Canada, these same groups have convinced our courts that picketing and prayer vigils are a form of violence and must therefore be suppressed.

Despite Canadian court rulings which have upheld picketing as a protected form of free expression, pro-lifers continue to run headlong into “bubble-zone” legislation. This type of legislation, currently in vogue in British Columbia and Ontario, effectively means freedom of speech is out the window when one ventures too close to an abortion clinic.

A recent editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail is instructive. The editorial lauds an Ontario court decision for upholding the right of Friends of the Lubicon to protest the forest industry’s logging operations on land claimed by the Lubicon tribe. “Whatever one thinks of the rightness of their cause, Friends of the Lubicon still have every right to speak out against what they see as a raw deal for the Lubicon,” the editorial reads. “They have every right to refuse to do business with Daishowa (the logging company), and to encourage other members of the public to show their displeasure by doing the same. That’s what democracy is all about.”

Pro-life veterans cannot emphasize enough the need to maintain a public witness against abortion. The battle to win back hearts and minds to the protection of innocent human life demands a steady vigilance. But as the Scheidler-RICO case and the Canadian “bubble-zone” experiences reveal, some civil rights are better protected than others.