Supreme Court Rules For Abortion Protesters In Civil Disobedience Case (RICO)

Associated Press / SFGate ^

[RCW2001]

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a federal racketeering law was improperly used to punish aggressive anti-abortion protesters, a major victory for people who regularly block clinic doors.

The court's 8-0 ruling applies to protests of all sorts, not just at clinics.

[Maximilian]

Please don't hate me for my independence and strength.

LOL. No, we hate you for other reasons. Just kidding about the hate -- strongly dislike, maybe. Here's one of the other reasons:

unrestricted signed up 2003-02-25

[Coleus]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[ohioWfan]

Let me offer you one last bit of advice before I leave you to your distortions and delusions about 'rights' and 'freedom'.......things you obviously know nothing about.

Whatever you do, whatever you have been coerced to believe from people who have somehow convinced your young and gullible mind that abortion has anything to do with your 'rights' as a woman..... (I assume you are a woman. Men rarely regurgitate the complete word for word manifesto of the radical left as you have so faithfully done), PLEASE.....PLEASE do NOT murder your own baby (if you haven't already). You will suffer pain your entire life because deep down inside EVERY woman knows that a 'fetus' is a child, and that murdering is NOT a right that she has.

If you do, or have already killed your own baby, it will only be through the grace of the God whose laws you mock with impunity, and through HIS forgiveness, that you will have hope of recovering from the guilt of the evil that you have done.

I wish you well as you seek to find the truth amid the lies you have been fed. I don't think you'd have come to a conservative forum as a leftist, if something inside you didn't long for the truth.

Please think about it.

[madprof98]

Please don't hate me for my independence and strength. I just want to preserve all of humanity's God-given freedoms. Women have become incredibly powerful and independent in the past thirty years and we must be grateful to those who have had the courage and the moral clarity to secure those rights and freedoms. Our Creator has endowed ALL with these inalienable rights and we must honor our Lord by preserving these rights for future generations.

I'm hoping you're really a 15-year-old who figures he is being incredibly cute by posting this stuff. Otherwise, I can only surmise that you hate God (and people who believe in God) because of some bad experience in your life. In that case, I'm terribly sorry for you.

[Lorianne]

Having a child and reaching one's full potential are not mutually exclusive propositions. People do both all the time.

And if they are mutually exclusive (which they're not) we should change the framework of society so that they are not. What you are saying in effect is a woman who procreates has to make a trade .... abortion for equal right to reach her full potential .... while men who procreate do not. And you're fine with that?

What's wrong with DEMANDING equal rights whether we have children or not? I don't see men petitioning the SC for the right to kill their offspring so that they can reach their "full potential". Under TRUE equality women would not need to abort to reach their "full potential" just as men do not need to kill their offspring to reach their full potential.

[valkyrieanne]

This begs the question. What can they be punished for? Tresspassing? Disturbing the peace? Does this mean we can block the doors again or what?

It means that trespassers and rescuers will still be prosecuted. But the difference is that pro-lifers won't be "RICOed." The other up side is that *legal* protest cannot under any circumstance be considered a RICO violation even if the clinic does lose money.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Busily making hundreds of millions of dollars off of girls coerced to abort by boyfriends and parents. Yep, sounds like "female empowerment and self-determination" to me.

Just to keep things clear, we should mention the number of girls who went to those unwed mothers homes and got tricked or coerced into giving up children, which were then sold to "nice" couples.

Need I mention the "charitable" industry, where bunches of people make great livings providing babies at a huge markup to those willing to adopt.

There is plenty of profiteering.

[valkyrieanne]

I rescind my props, although still posit that protection of property rights must not be ignored in this case.

Property rights are of two kinds. First, there is the safety and security of the owner's real property (in this case, the clinic's private property.) People who trespass are going to get arrested (usually a misdemeanor in most states.) This SCOTUS ruling doesn't change that.

Then there is the money that the clinic earns. As another writer pointed out, no private individual in general has an automatic right to another private individual's money (some exceptions like alimony & child support we will not discuss.)

People are free to tell others not to patronize a certain business or activity. That's what advertising is. That's what boycotts are. Pro-lifers are in front of the abortion clinic property to exercise their constitutional rights - to peaceably assemble and protest abortion; to inform the passing public about the nature of abortion; to inform the incoming women about abortion.

The abortion clinic has the right to keep protestors off their property. It has no right to the dollars a woman decides NOT to spend on an abortion.

[Poohbah]

They thought Jesus had, too.

Scheidler ain't Jesus.

[valkyrieanne]

Normally I don't feed trolls, but I don't think you're a troll, so I'll answer you.

I was pro-abortion in my youth, too. I said the *same* things about "women's rights," "empowerment," "we need abortion to be free," etc.

What changed my mind? Biology classes in college, especially the section in an anatomy and physiology class on human growth and development in the womb. I didn't believe in God at the time, but I did believe in science, and there it was in black and white on the page.

What species was inside a human womb? It certainly wasn't a pig, or a chick, or a monkey. It was a human being. Humans didn't give birth to chicks or pigs or monkeys. Nor was there some magical time in development when a non-human 'became' a human. What was produced from human sperm and egg was human from the first.

That was the first step. Later I came to realize that not only was there a child inside the womb, but *logically* if there was a child there, there was no "right" to kill it. The state of dependence of that child, its size, its physical appearance, whether it was healthy or had a handicap were all *irrelevant.*

I still didn't believe in God. I was still a liberal in many respects. But I could not any longer justify abortion on the grounds of "women's empowerment." Half the unborn children in the womb would grow up to be women - and if they were killed before birth, they couldn't do that.

[Poohbah]

People are free to tell others not to patronize a certain business or activity. That's what advertising is. That's what boycotts are. Pro-lifers are in front of the abortion clinic property to exercise their constitutional rights - to peaceably assemble and protest abortion; to inform the passing public about the nature of abortion; to inform the incoming women about abortion.

If that's all Scheidler et al were doing, your statement would be correct.

Deliberately seeking to physically prevent people from entering of their free will is another issue entirely. Attempt to impede me from going about my lawful business by means of false arrest, and you will not like my reaction.

[Cicero]

Exactly right. If someone breaks the law at an abortion clinic, there are plenty of laws to book them on: trespass, for instance. But it's wrong to use RICO only against pro-lifers and politically targeted groups.

This is a huge victory for pro-lifers, and it's also a huge victory for those who believe in strict construction of the Constitution and in individual rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Libertarians should agree. Libertarians should understand that you can't base your own right to personal freedom on the direct violation of someone else's most basic right--the right to life. We all have these rights, and need to protect each other's rights as well as our own.

[Poohbah]

Exactly right. If someone breaks the law at an abortion clinic, there are plenty of laws to book them on: trespass, for instance. But it's wrong to use RICO only against pro-lifers and politically targeted groups.

And I suppose that, when the usual suspects (the anti-war freaks) deliberately impede people's coming and goings in a multistate criminal conspiracy as part of an effort to support Iraq against the US...you'll demand that their "right" to do so be upheld.

[Torie]

SCOTUS is a jewel in the crown when it comes to free speech issues. That is the clause where their earn their keep in my opinion.

[Z in Oregon]

Welcome to Free Republic, BTW.

Funny girl.

[Z in Oregon]

Unwanted by whom? Should the baby die if only the mother wants it? If only the father wants it? If only one set of grandparent wants it? If only an adoptive couple waiting in the wings wants it?

[Sir_Ed]

"When a person or government forces a woman to cede control of her reproductive organs it is rape."

Uh...the conception has already taken place. It's not like the unborn baby sits as a mass of cells until the Hand Of Gov't declares that mass of cells to be a baby. So...there's no such thing as "ceding control" of her reproductive organs, nature ITSELF has created an unborn child. It's legal, unfortuantely, for the mother to then kill that unborn child, but...abortion or no abortion, that unborn baby is a baby. If she is aborted, then she is an aborted unborn baby, if she's carried to full term, then she gets delivered.

Ed