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The Abortion War: Zealots Fail to Stop Clinics
| Article
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20695 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1992 |
1,764 Words |
| Author
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Kim Gandy
Kim Gandy is executive vice president of National Organization
for Women, Inc. |
You've seen them on television. Grown men crawling along the ground, trying to squeeze between the legs of police and clinic defenders. Dozens charging the human defense barricades to reach clinics on private property. Ministers using their bodies as weapons. Fanatics chaining their head to concrete blocks and clinic doors. Demonstrators praying and picketing across the street, shouting at passersby to "repent." Bullies harassing and intimidating patients, physically block their entrance into women's health clinics.
And you've seen the results of the others, the terrorists you don't see--the bombed and burned buildings, destroyed equipment, death threats to doctors and clinic employees, pickets of their homes and harassment of their children at school. Their widespread intimidation and personal threats have driven some doctors to stop doing abortions--only to be replaced by new doctors who will.
Who are these people? Operation Rescue and its parent (and sibling) organizations, like the Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN), Rescue America, Pro-Life Action League (PLAL), Missionaries to the Preborn, and Lambs of Christ have made a name for themselves by trying to close down women's health clinics through "whatever means necessary," legal or illegal.
But heir successes have been few and far between in the past year, and Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry has credited the massive lawsuits by NOW and the NOW legal Defense and Education Fund, which resulted in contempt fines of nearly $500,000, with driving the organization underground.
Is it legal?
Is Operation Rescue legal? The answer is, strictly speaking, yes. And no. The organization is legal in the sense that its existence as an association is not illegal. But many, in fact most, of its tactics are unlawful.
The "whatever means necessary" clinic attacks amount to illegal conspiracies that violate at least three federal statues: the Sherman Act, which prohibits any conspiracy "in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States"; the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which prohibits conspiracies using extortion or threats of physical violence to obstruct, delay or affect commerce; and the Ku Klux Klan Act, which prohibits conspiracies to deprive individuals of their civil rights, including hindering local authorities in the their enforcement
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