Say Anything Blog

A victory of sorts for the anti-abortionists?

Back in 1986, the National Organization for Women (NOW) filed a class-action suit challenging tactics used by the Pro-Life Action Network to block women from entering abortion clinics. NOW's legal strategy relied on civil provisions of the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which was used predominantly in criminal cases against organized crime. The lawsuit also relied on the Hobbs Act, a 55-year-old law banning extortion.

A federal judge issued a nationwide injunction against the anti-abortion protesters after a Chicago jury found in 1998 that demonstrators had engaged in a pattern of racketeering by interfering with clinic operations, menacing doctors, assaulting patients and damaging clinic property. But the Supreme Court voided the injunction in 2003, ruling that the extortion law could not be used against the protesters because they had not illegally "obtained property" from women seeking to enter clinics to receive abortions. However, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had kept the case alive despite the 2003 high court ruling.

In writing for the 8 - 0 decision, Justice Stephen Breyer said Congress did not intend to create "a freestanding physical violence offense" in the federal extortion law known as the Hobbs Act.

Instead, Breyer wrote, Congress chose to address violence outside abortion clinics in 1994 by passing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which set parameters for such protests

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Regardless of how one feels about abortion, the NOW tactics to use the racketeering law, which was obviously intended for other purposes, to discourage protests is at best disingenuous.

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