By Claudette Bégin
BERKELEY — On February 2, a federal jury ordered a national coalition of anti-abortionists to pay $109 million in damages to four doctors and two clinics in Oregon. The jury determined that "Wanted" posters and a web site called "The Nuremberg Files" illegally threatened the doctors, whose names, addresses and other personal information appeared on them.
The web page listed doctors' and activists' personal information to facilitate locating the "murderers", and offered cash rewards. Images of dripping blood added to the threatening tone, but its most chilling feature was the instant crossing out of doctors who were killed and the greying of those who were injured.
Despite abortion being a legal procedure since the 1973 US Supreme Court decision in Roe vs Wade, the legislative and organising onslaught of the extreme right has resulted in limitations on the availability of abortion despite significant periods of pro-choice mobilisation.
Christian fundamentalist groups and individuals have perpetrated 1500 acts of violence, such as clinic invasions, fire-bombings, gas attacks, assaults against clients, clinic defenders and providers, and murders. For some doctors, it has become a life of heroism to continue doing abortions. For clinic owners and staff, it has meant financial and psychological stress.
Since the mid-1980s, women's rights activists have been defending clinics against blockades, escorting women through anti-abortion protests at clinic entrances, organising mobilisations involving millions of people, lobbying for legislation to protect clinics and providers and constantly pressuring local and national agencies to defend women and providers and to arrest those perpetrating the violence.
This mobilisation had become so widespread and determined by 1992 that the press called it "the year of the woman". The national Democratic Party made abortion choice a "priority" and President Clinton started his presidency by reversing some federal anti-choice policies.
Women's rights advocates had hoped for the reversal of local, state and national enforcement officials' policies of ignoring the bombings and assaults, and treating them as isolated instances or an excuse to harass the complainants. But it took the murder of several doctors and clinic employees before the Clinton administration ordered serious investigations.
The National Organisation of Women (NOW) and other pro-choice organisations finally achieved the passage of special legislation that established specific guidelines and penalties against "intentionally injuring, intimidating, or interfering with or attempting to injure ... by force or threat of force or physical obstruction ... in order to ... (limit access to) reproductive health services".
Increased public outrage at the violence helped marginalise the more strident anti-abortion organisations, and some anti-abortion groups publicly disassociated themselves from the violence.
However, the underground wing continued its activities. Personal harassment against clinic personnel increased even as clinic bombings decreased. "Wanted" posters were widely distributed, and invasive personal information was advertised to facilitate harassment — home addresses, car licence numbers, children's names and the location of their schools.
Doctors were shot at, injured and killed. Clinic owners had already transformed their facilities into forts with hired guards; now the FBI started advocating that all doctors wear bulletproof vests away from the clinic.
The anti-abortion militants have used sophisticated strategies to fight the legal and constitutional rights of women in the US, many of them borrowed from the progressive movements of the '50s, '60s and '70s. They've invoked "civil rights" tactics in blockading clinics, they've claimed to represent the poor and downtrodden, they've pretended that women are endangered by safe abortions, they've claimed protection from the First Amendment guaranteeing free speech as they harassed women entering clinics, and they've lamented the lives of the unborn following the murders of doctors and clinic staff. They named their web page after the international trials of Nazi war criminals.
Frustrated by the ineffective prosecution of violent anti-abortion acts, NOW filed a class action suit against prominent leaders of the anti-abortion movement and their organisations. It was a landmark civil use of the national racketeering act (RICO) to charge them with operating a national network engaged in murder, arson, extortion and other violations of federal law to deprive women of access to their constitutional right to abortion.
The suit against Jo Scheidler and Randall Terry was successful through all the challenges to it up to the Supreme Court. In 1998, after more than a decade, NOW won an injunction against the defenders' blockades, extortion and other use of force or violence at clinics.
However, Terry left the anti-abortion movement, moving on to other right-wing causes, and little or none of the damages were collected since the organisations and leaders had hidden their funds.
Some women's activists and progressive supporters of the women's movement have expressed concern about invoking RICO and sections of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act because of their potential use against non-violent, progressive activists conducting sit-ins and the like. So often, state enforcement agencies are more anxious to use the law against the left than against the right.
In that context, when Planned Parenthood, the Portland Feminist Women's Health Center and four doctors launched this suit in Oregon, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a friend of the court brief.
The ACLU agreed that the doctors argued persuasively that their fears were real, listing hundreds of violent acts against US clinics and providers over the past two decades. But it expressed concern after the decision that the decision did not include intent: "This decision will almost certainly be appealed to the Ninth Circuit, and it may eventually reach the US Supreme Court. The standard ... must be carefully drawn both to safeguard against any chilling effect on free speech while still preventing the First Amendment from being used as a shield by those who make true threats of violence."
The violence has not ended yet. Immediately after the jury's decision, Planned Parenthood and others sought an injunction against the defendants. The judge denied their motion. Just as quickly, the designer of the web page boasted he would add live views of women entering clinics all over the world.
For the moment, the web page is off-line in the US because the service provider pulled it for violating its policy against threatening language. However, in Amsterdam a so-called mirror of the site has been set up, ostensibly to show that attempts to restrict freedom of speech on the internet are futile.
Activists' concern to find an effective way to defeat the anti-abortion terrorists without jeopardising rights for progressive activists is important and requires extra vigilance. It requires forging alliances with other movements for social change and finding an effective balance between demanding just protection from the state and relying on politicisation and mobilisation of the progressive movement as a whole.