ENDEAVOUR FORUM NEWSLETTER No. 110, APRIL 2003

 

 

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VICTORY FOR JOE 

 

Joe Scheidler, the hero of many pro-life campaigns  has finally  been vindicated.  The US Supreme Court ruled in February  2003  that a federal racketeering law (RICO)  cannot be used to prosecute pro-life campaigners who picket abortion clinics.  The ruling in the case of Scheidler v NOW  (National Organization of Women) was welcomed by pro-life groups and by the Catholic Church.  Cathy Cleaver, director of planning and information at the US  Catholic  Bishops Pro-Life  Secretariat said:  “The pro-abortion movement has been very successful in using the courts to make changes in the law.  Thankfully, this time the Supreme  Court refused NOW’s strategy to re-define pro-life protesters as extortionists.  It is frankly gratifying to see this radical group stopped in its tracks.”  

In the 8-1 decision, the US  Supreme Court with (Justice Paul Stevens dissenting) ruled  that federal racketeering and extortion laws were improperly used to punish pro-life protesters.  The ruling which applies to protests of all kinds, lifts a nationwide injunction prohibiting people from interfering with abortion clinic business.  The Court’s ruling is a victory  for Joe Scheidler, director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League, Operation Rescue, and others who were ordered to pay damages to abortion clinics and were banned from protesting outside abortion clinics for the past l0 years.   

The decision ends a case begun in 1986 when the National Organization for Women and two abortion clinics in Delaware and Wisconsin accused the pro-life groups of racketeering and extortion and went to court claiming that the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) and the Hobbs Act, a 1946  law aimed  at crushing organized crime, should protect businesses (abortion clinics) from violent protests that drive away clients.   

Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the majority, said that when protesters do not “obtain” property, they cannot be punished under federal extortion laws.  He said there is no dispute that abortion protesters interfered with clinic operations   “but even when their acts of interference and disruption achieved their ultimate goal of ‘shutting down’ a clinic that performed abortions, such acts did not constitute extortion”.

We congratulate Joe, his wife, Anne,  and all the pro-lifers involved who endured years of persecution and great personal and financial sacrifice at the hands of NOW and the US federal courts.  Joe and others will now return to their life-saving mission of peacefully counselling outside the clinics.       

More good news comes from Poland.  "What Happens If You Make Abortion Illegal???" is the title of a new brochure from Jack and Barbara Willke's Life Issues Institute.  It points out the fallacy of the argument that making abortion illegal will just "drive women into the hands of illegal abortionists and there will be blood running from the back alleys".  Poland, a nation of 40 million people in which abortion was legal during 44 years of Communist rule, averaged 150,000 abortions per year.  In 1993 abortion was outlawed. By 2000 the annual number of abortions had dropped to 138!  

In celebrating our  24th Birthday ,  we are honoured to have as guest speaker the  parliamentarian who rid  us of the Northern Territory's  euthanasia legislation, the Hon. Kevin Andrews MP.. Come and hear him speak  and celebrate with us.

 

 

 

Member Organisation, World Council for Life and Family

NGO in Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC of the UN