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The Web site opened by a militant anti-abortion group in January 1997 sent a chilling message. The site listed the names of some 200 physicians identified as “abortionists.” Some of the names were grayed out. “Wounded,” the home page explained. Other names had a horizontal strikethrough — for “fatality.”
Among the doctors named on the site were four Oregon physicians who also had been pictured two years earlier on a Wild West-style poster released by the American Coalition of Life Activists. The poster bore the headline “Guilty” and identified the 13 physicians shown as “baby butchers.”
At a time when abortion clinic violence was at a peak, the Oregon doctors viewed the Web site and poster as threats on their lives. Along with taking security precautions, the physicians also filed a federal court suit hoping to take down the postings and collect damages from the groups and individuals responsible.
A jury in Oregon awarded $107 million to the four doctors and two women's clinics that joined as plaintiffs. A federal appeals court upheld the award in May 2002, but dissenting judges in the 6-5 decision strongly argued that the anti-abortion messages were constitutionally protected speech.
Now, the anti-abortion groups' appeal is presenting the Supreme Court with another in a series of difficult cases testing the limits of free speech in the context of anti-abortion activities that entail violence or disruption, actual or threatened. The Bush administration also appears to be struggling with the case. The court asked the Justice Department's solicitor general's office to submit a brief on the case in mid-December, but as of mid-March nothing had been filed. The justices would normally wait for the government's brief before deciding whether to hear the appeal.
The closely watched case comes against the backdrop of a decade of abortion-related violence that included shootings, bombings, arson and clinic blockades. At least seven people have been killed: three physicians, two clinic employees, a clinic escort and an off-duty police officer who died in a Birmingham, Ala., clinic bombing in 1998.
James Kopp, the defendant in the most recent of the shootings, went on trial in Buffalo, N.Y., on March 17. Kopp has admitted shooting Barnet Slepian at his home in Amherst, N.Y., in 1998, but claimed he meant only to wound the doctor. Kopp was convicted of second-degree murder on March 18; he faces a minimum prison term of 15 years and a maximum of 25 years to life.
Violence and disruption have been ebbing for the past three years. For 2002, the National Abortion Federation (NAF), which represents abortion clinics, counted 265 incidents of “violence,” but almost all were in the least serious categories of trespassing, vandalism or stalking. The federation listed one arson and one “invasion” for the year. It also counted four clinic blockades, with no arrests.
NAF President Vicki Saporta attributes the decline in violence to federal law enforcement. She notes that former Attorney General Janet Reno put Kopp and another anti-abortion fugitive — Eric Rudolph — on the FBI's “Ten Most Wanted” list. Kopp was arrested in France and extradited to the U.S. Rudolph, charged in the Birmingham bombing, is still at large.
Operation Rescue, once the largest of the militant anti-abortion groups, is now bankrupt and defunct; none of the existing groups matches its size or visibility. Major anti-abortion organizations routinely condemn violence. The National Right to Life Committee says it prohibits any violence or illegal activity by its members. Still, Saporta says she fears trials such as Kopp's give militant organizations “the chance to recruit the next assassin.”
The Supreme Court has bolstered clinics' legal efforts against violence with a series of divided rulings over the past decade. Three rulings in 1994, 1997 and 2000 allow court injunctions or state laws to establish “buffer zones” requiring protesters to keep some minimum distance from clinic entrances or clinic personnel and patients as they enter or leave the premises. Dissenting justices in each of the decisions argued the rulings infringed on free speech.
A separate ruling in 1994 allowed women's clinics to sue demonstrators for damages under the federal anti-racketeering law commonly known as RICO. Under that ruling, women's clinics later won a $250,000 verdict in the case, but the Supreme Court on Feb. 26 threw out the award. The court ruled, 8-1, that the demonstrators' conduct did not amount to extortion for purposes of the racketeering law.
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