Pro-Family Groups Celebrate SCOTUS Victory, Pro-Life Protesters' Vindication
by Bill Fancher, Allie Martin, and Jenni Parker
March 1, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that federal extortion and racketeering laws cannot be used to ban pro-life demonstrations in front of abortion clinics. Pro-life groups are celebrating the high court's decision declaring that peaceful demonstrators for their cause cannot be prosecuted under RICO statutes designed to fight organized crime. The 8-0 decision ends a case that the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had kept alive despite a 2003 high court decision that lifted a nationwide injunction against pro-life groups led by Joseph Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League and others. Pro-abortion forces had sued pro-life demonstrators under federal extortion laws, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in judgments against peaceful demonstrators.
Pro-lifer Troy Newman of Operation Rescue is thrilled about the Supreme Court's decision. "This is a huge day for the pro-life movement," he says. "It's exciting, it's exhilarating, and it's a vindication for the thousands upon thousands of pro-lifers who have gone to the street to peacefully intervene on behalf of the pre-born children."
Some pro-life leaders are calling the court's ruling the latest indication that the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on demand in the U.S. is crumbling. Newman says the signs are everywhere that Roe v. Wade is about to become history.
"There's a huge momentum in this country right now to overturn Roe with a frontal assault," the Operation Rescue spokesman says. "We see a ban pending in South Dakota. We see the Supreme Court revisiting the partial-birth abortion case later this fall. We've got a new court, minus the very leftist Sandra Day O'Connor." Also, he notes, "There's also the young people -- 78 percent of young people under 18 believe abortion is immoral."
Operation Rescue and its fellow pro-life litigants "are very excited to finally see this case put behind us once and for all," Newman adds. "This is a victory, not only for pro-lifers," he says, but also for unborn babies and "for the women ... entering our nation's abortion mills, who now will have greater access to more information and practical assistance that can help them spare the lives of their pre-born children."
High Court Affirms Pro-Lifers Right to Demonstrate Against Abortion
The pro-abortion lobby has for years been urging the use of the RICO, the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, to go after pro-life demonstrators. However, the Supreme Court's February 28 decision clearly and unequivocally rejected the use of the statutes against pro-lifers.
The American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) filed a brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of Operation Rescue in the consolidation of the cases of Scheidler v. National Organization for Women (NOW) and Operation Rescue v. National Organization for Women. ACLJ chief counsel Jay Sekulow served as Counsel of Record in the Operation Rescue case and worked with the legal team that presented arguments before the Supreme Court.
In that brief, the ACLJ argued that a non-violent pro-life sit-in at an abortion business does not qualify as federal criminal extortion. The ACLJ asked the Supreme Court to overturn a federal appeals court ruling in 2001 -- a decision upholding a lower-court judgment that determined pro-life defendants were liable for "extortion" and "racketeering" under RICO and awarded damages to abortion businesses, while upholding a nationwide injunction issued against the pro-life groups.
Sekulow calls the decision "a tremendous victory for those who engage in social protests." He says the high court justices "forcefully rejected" the opposition's argument that pro-life demonstrators were racketeers engaged in extortion. The decision "removes a cloud that has been hanging over the pro-life movement" for years, the attorney adds, and it "clearly shuts the door on using RICO against the pro-life movement."
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Steve Crampton |
Steve Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy (AFA Law Center), agrees that the Supreme Court's ruling is a monumental one for pro-life and pro-family demonstrators. "What you have is an alignment of cases -- of the stars, if you will -- in favor of a dramatic shift in the U.S. Supreme Court that certainly holds great promise for the preservation of life," he says. This decision should bring to a close the two-decades-old legal fight over abortion protests, Crampton adds. That battle began in 1986 when the National Organization for Women filed a class-action suit challenging tactics used by the Pro-Life Action Network to block women from entering abortion clinics.
With this ruling, the AFA Law Center attorney contends, the high court has vindicated peaceful pro-life protesters and ended 20 years of harassment against law-abiding sanctity-of-life demonstrators. "What it represents," he explains, "is an attempt by the pro-abortion groups to be creative and bring to bear against peaceful pro-lifers criminal laws never intended to be applied in this fashion."
Crampton feels the attempt by pro-abortion forces to use RICO against their pro-life opponents was a disingenuous effort from the beginning and should never have gone forward. "In my view, the whole litigation is premised on a bad faith reading of the law," he says.
Pro-Family Groups Pleased, Proud, and Grateful
Several pro-family leaders are hailing the Supreme Court's ruling and commending the pro-life parties involved in the case. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition noted, "This is a victory that is a long time in coming, but whose arrival was never in doubt." Mahoney says every U.S. citizen "owes Joe Scheidler a debt of gratitude" for fighting this two-decade battle to preserve freedoms for all Americans.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council notes that Scheidler had the support of a wide array of groups, including the AFL-CIO labor organization. Perkins says this is "because they all recognized that if NOW's extreme legal view prevailed, our fundamental freedoms would be aborted."
Concerned Women for America (CWA) is likewise applauding the decision and its vindication of Scheidler and the other pro-life leaders' admirable stance. Wendy Wright, the group's president, says CWA is "proud to have stood with Joe Scheidler, Timothy Murphy, Operation Rescue and the other defendants to protect free speech for all."
Wendy Wright | |
Wright also commends the court for upholding pro-lifers' free-speech rights. "Thank God the U.S. Supreme Court smacked down -- again -- NOW and abortion clinics' blind pursuit to crush pro-life protesters and, in the process, demolish all Americans' First Amendment rights." The pro-family spokeswoman points out that thousands of women have changed their minds, choosing life rather than abortion, thanks to the actions of pro-life protesters at abortion clinics. "For these women," she says, "this ruling has greater meaning: The court will not unjustly punish those who helped save their children's lives."
Wright was among those who testified before the court, providing eyewitness accounts as evidence that NOW's witnesses perjured themselves when they claimed violence occurred during certain peaceful pro-life protests. CWA filed two amicus briefs in this case, presenting key arguments, which the Supreme Court affirmed in its decision.
