Supreme Court To Hear NOW v. Scheidler Abortion Protest Appeal
by Pro-Life Action League

Washington, DC -- On Monday, April 22 the U. S. Supreme Court said it will review the NOW v. Scheidler RICO judgment of $258,000 and the nationwide injunction awarded in favor of the NOW and the abortion industry in August, 1999. The judgment and decree were entered in U.S. district court in Chicago after an 8-week trial in 1998.

The trial followed a prior 1994 Supreme Court ruling that allowed use of the federal racketeering laws against political protesters who lacked an economic motive.  NOW represented its women members and all other U.S. women whose access to abortion had been interfered with.  Abortion providers in Milwaukee and Delaware represented nearly all U.S. clinics. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago affirmed the judgment last October.

"We are cautiously elated that the Court finds this case worthy of review," said Joseph M. Scheidler, National Director of the Pro-Life Action League, one of the named defendants.  Others sued included the League, Andrew Schonberg, Timothy Murphy, & Operation Rescue.

The lower courts held defendants liable as racketeers answerable for a nationwide, 12-year pattern of "predicate crimes."  These crimes largely consisted of acts of civil disobedience, such as sit-ins or blockades at abortion clinics.  These acts were held to constitute the federal felony crime of extortion, defined as "obtaining property" by means of "actual or threatened force, violence, or fear."

"Our movement is non-violent," said Scheidler. "We believe that abortion inflicts deadly violence on infants and scars their mothers.  No pro-life protester sought or obtained any property.  On the contrary, they appeal to conscience, urging mothers to spare the lives of infants and providers to give up their grisly trade.  The verdict reflects our non-violence. Jurors had blamed either the defendants or their unnamed 'associates' for only four acts or threats of violence anywhere in the U.S. over a 12 year period."

The real target was the use of Gandhi an tactics of non-violent civil disobedience and what Dr. Martin Luther King called peaceable, non-violent direct action - involving peaceful sit-ins at clinic sites. This was condemned as "extortion," and a "pattern" of such acts was held to be "racketeering."  The crime of federal extortion had to be redefined as any "interference with rights" of business providers or patrons. "Fear" included loss of business.

The Supreme Court rebuffed NOW's objections to the filing of friend of the court briefs supporting the appeal by the Seamless Garment Network, Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Sojourners, Pox Christi USA, Not Dead Yet, Concerned Women for America, Feminists for Life of New York, Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the Venues Support Committee, Voices in the Wilderness, the Kerrigan brothers, Liz McAlister, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, Plowshares, Prof. Howard Sinn, and actor-activist Martin Sheen.

An hour is set aside for oral argument to be fixed in the October Term, 2002.