Word: scheidler
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...rule it out just because the perpetrators are nonprofit, indicated a unanimous Supreme Court last week. Writing for his colleagues in the case National Organization for Women, Inc., et al. v. Scheidler, et al., Chief Justice William Rehnquist held that even though antiabortion activists do not seek financial gain, they may still be hit with suits under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, an extremely effective ) prosecutor's tool forged in 1970. He pointed out that it was money lost by victims rather than money gained by the perpetrators that informed his decision. The blockades have indeed been...
When pro-lifer Michael Griffin shot abortion doctor David Gunn in March of last year, the killing helped crystallize a growing public skepticism that the confrontational blockade-and-harass tactics of organizations like Randall Terry's Operation Rescue and Joseph Scheidler's Pro-Life Action Network accurately reflected the compassionate motivations of many pro-lifers. The pro-choice movement, not surprisingly, had already noticed a growing violence among its opposition, and associated it quite directly with the ascension of groups like Terry's and Scheidler's. Since the mid-1980s the choicers had been searching for a sort of statutory...
...RICO had so much momentum that NOW, embarked on a large antitrust case it had first brought in Delaware, changed the suit's focus to racketeering under the direction of Fay Clayton, a Chicago lawyer with RICO experience. The defendant list was amended to include Terry as well as Scheidler, and the alleged rackets grew to include forcible "invasion" of clinics, burglary (a theft from a dumpster of fetal material) and arson...
...defendants, at least initially, acted a lot like losers. They cried foul, proclaimed defiance and plotted evasion. "A vulgar betrayal of over 200 years of tolerance toward protest," said Terry. Reverend Keith Tucci, also of Rescue, notes that RICO might force currently open protesters into a more violent underground. Scheidler pooh-poohs triple damages on grounds of his own poverty -- "you can't get blood from a turnip" -- and then reels off a couple of nonviolent schemes that might sidestep RICO. Spilling cranberry juice on white snow to simulate fetal blood might have impact, he suggests; as would abandoning...
ABORTION (NOW v. Scheidler) The Question: May abortion clinics use federal racketeering laws to stop harassment and blockades by pro-life activists? Prediction: The court, and Ginsburg, will...