The truth is, anti-abortion terrorism is not racketeering

This is one of those "I have a bone to pick with" Planned Parenthood. How could they get away for so long with the claim that Operation Rescue's terrorist attacks on abortion clinics was akin to racketeering just has me a loss for words. They certainly not one and the same. At all.

[via Supreme Court Backs Abortion Protesters in Unanimous Ruling - New York Times]:

The ruling today marked the third time the justices have addressed the long-running dispute over how federal law applies to blockades of abortion clinics. The Hobbs Act, enacted in 1946 to supersede a 1934 anti-racketeering statute, specifically outlaws the obstruction of commerce "by robbery or extortion."

Two violations of the Hobbs Act, in turn, can demonstrate a "pattern of racketeering activity" that entitles victims to triple damages under the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.

In the 1980's, the National Organization for Women and two abortion clinics sued Operation Rescue and the Pro-Life Action League under the Hobbs Act. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that abortion clinics could use that statute, but that they had to prove in court that the actions of protesters were part of a "pattern of racketeering activity."

But later, after the anti-abortion groups won in the lower federal courts, the Supreme Court reversed its own ruling, holding in 2003 that the protesters' behavior around clinics did not amount to extortion, or trying to obtain another's property through real or threatened "force, violence or fear."

And I don't even consider myself a legal scholar but as a linguist and language philosopher I could in a heartbeat see how wrong it was to use the Hobbs Act. Then again, it was all they had available at the time. So politically speaking, it made sense becuase it gave them what they needed : federal and state legislation all across the country declaring attacks against abortion clinics and their workers illegal.

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