Federal appeals court says abortion foes intimidated doctors

Associated Press ^ | May 16, 2002 | David Kravets

[gdani]

A federal appeals court reversed course Thursday and ruled that anti-abortion activists who created Wild West-style posters and a Web site condemning abortion doctors can be held liable because their works amounted to illegal threats, not free speech.

However, the sharply divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a lower-court judge to reduce the $107 million in damages a Portland, Ore., jury awarded to four doctors who sued a dozen of the abortion foes.

[MonroeDNA]

Supreme Court, anyone?

Count me in.

Will I know appear on a poster? My right side is best.

[Dumb_Ox]

and do you think that violence is an appropriate tactic?

Trolling for kooks? Violence-advocacy posts have been banned at FR since its early days.

As for me, what I'm wondering is if WTO protesters and striking workers are held to the same standard, of if this is another politically-motivated decision. And of course, there's daily violence inside the "clinic," but since it's against fetal non-persons, it doesn't "count."

[Quila]

I'm curious; regardless of where you stand on abortion rights, does anyone think that the Nuremberg Files website was supporting violence against abortion providers,

It looked pretty clear to me: "Here are these people, here are the one's already killed, only this many left to go..."

I heard comments in a forum normally completely outside this subject. Interesting ones like:

If someone put up a site for judges while people were picking them off in their homes, I think there might be less dissent.

Interesting way to put it into perspective. There was also the fact that this site fit the definition of terrorism as soon as the site was ruled unlawful:

"NOUN: The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons. "

Still this is a very scary precipice for me, all ideology aside. I hope people don't have to start wording their web sites very carefully to avoid prosecution.

[vharlow]

Notice that they have decided that "intimidation" is illegal. How does that play with free speech guaranteed in the Constitution? Frankly, lots of people should be looking at suing Jesse Jackson and others like him for "intimidation" as they have been intimidating large corporations out of huge sums of money for a long time. Why, some could say they are intimidated by all those folk who shriek and shout down conservative speakers on college campuses these days....

Since when do wimps get to say those who use only words against them are breaking laws? All those kids calling names passing through the neighborhood today at one girl could all be lawbreakers? She was definitely "intimidated!"

This is really getting out of hand.

[muawiyah]

Let's ask the other side - years ago I wrote a letter to the Fairfax Journal (a local newspaper, and then under different ownership). This letter contained the expression "abortion mill".

It was published several days later, along with a "rebuttal" by some babe from one of the baby eating organizations.

Interesting practice by the editor, eh?!

However, before it was published, a carload of obese lesbian thugs pulled up in front of my house and parked there for several hours. When I left the house in my car, they followed me. When I came back home, they followed me home.

Eventually they left.

That means the pro-abortionists and their running dog evil minions do, in fact, believe in intimidation, and would undoubtedly use violence if they thought they could get away with it.

The Nuremburg Files site is nonviolent, and I found absolutely no advocacy for violence in it.

Self defense is protected by the Second Amendment.