From: bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com (J H Woodyatt)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,talk.abortion,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: The Supreme Court Upholds Freedom of Speech
Date: 26 Jan 93 01:21:31 GMT
Reply-To: bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com
Organization: Abiogenesis 4 Less

In article <1jqe2lINN8cf@shelley.u.washington.edu>, tzs@stein.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) writes:
# >> 	True.  But you won't have to look very hard at all to discover that
# >> citizens have a right to enter a legal place of business without being
# >> assaulted or having their way physically blocked.  
# >
# >This statement could also be used against most people that are out on 
# >*strike* when they are picketing their place of *employment*.
# 
# More interesting is to ask what is the difference between the following:
# 
# 	1. Blocking streets and buildings to protest abortion.
# 
# 	2. Blocking streets and buildings to protest a war.
# 
# 	3. Blocking streets and buildings to protest a veto of a bill.
# 
# 	4. Blocking streets and buildings to protest a jury verdict that
# 	you don't like.

As someone who is willing to take to the streets every now and then to
vent spleen about various atrocious acts of State, please allow me to
provide some clues.

All of the above activities can fairly be grouped under the broad
category of civil disobedience.  Non-violent civil disobedience has
historically been an effective means of promoting change, and it has
the added plus of keeping casualties low, usually.

However, the activities brought to the attention of the Supreme Court
in the Bray vs. Alexandria case (which spawned this accursed thread)
go beyond simple civil disobedience in one arguably important way:
Operation Rescue does not simply block streets and randomly selected
buildings, it blockades women's health clinics that provide abortion
services.

The argument goes that what O.R. does is more than simply civil
disobedience to protest the availability of legal abortion, it is a
conspiracy to deprive a class of women of their constitutional right
to legal abortion united by a significant animosity toward the class
of women targeted by their actions.  The pro-abortion-rights take on
Alexandria vs. Bray was that the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was
designed to protect unspecified classes of people from conspiracies to
deprive them of their constitutional rights, applies in the case of
anti-abortion activists blocking access to health clinics, and can be
used to grant federal authority to keep clinics open in the absence of
adequate state action.

The Supreme Court has historically interpreted the Ku Klux Klan Act of
1871 as requiring `class based animus' on the part of any alleged
`conspiracy,' and the pro-abortion-rights argument goes that
protestors who block access to women's health clinics *are* acting
with `class based animus' -- that clearly, any organization that holds
that the State has a compelling interest in controlling the
reproductive systems in the bodies of a specific class of people, and
only those people, is self-evidently hostile to such a class.

The Supreme Court disagreed.  This has absolutely nothing to do with
freedom of speech, and nothing to do with the effectivity of civil
disobedience in the effecting of political change.  The whole argument
is over whether one can participate in an organized blockade designed
to deprive women access to a women's health clinic without having any
animosity toward the women so deprived.

The Supreme Court said in a 5-4 decision, basically, ``Yes.'' -- that
one can be completely free of animosity towards women while engaging
in activity explicitly designed to prevent them from exercising the
freedom to control their own reproductive systems.


-- 
+---------------------------+  I wasn't expecting it.  When Danny Elfman
| J H Woodyatt              |  sang the words, `goo goo ga choo,' Sunday
| bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com |  night, I cracked.  Some horrors are too
+---------------------------+  large to shade out.
Xref: sparky misc.legal:23174 alt.censorship:10089