From: matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: The Supreme Court Upholds Freedom of Speech
Summary: Dow Chemical Company meets Tiller the Killer.
Keywords: Napalm; Saline solution
Date: 26 Jan 93 13:54:46 GMT
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Lab, APG MD.

In article <1993Jan26.012131.2766@wdl.loral.com> 
bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com writes:

>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.  [J H Woodyatt]

As well it might:  The description, "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,"
happens to fit the 3-man subset of the U. S. Supreme Court itself
that dissented in the case of _Roe v. Wade_, 410 U.S. 113 (1973),
as well as the subset of Justices who dissented in _Planned Parenthood
v. Casey_ last year and who would have overturned _Roe_.

>. . . 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.  [J H Woodyatt]

There was a time when pro-Vietcong, anti-war protestors blockaded
the office in Mallinckrodt Hall, Harvard University's Chemistry
building, where recruiters from the Dow Chemical Company were waiting
to meet with students interested in working for Dow.  Dow Chemical
Company were the makers of napalm, as in the famous picture of a
nine-year-old Vietnamese girl screaming while she ran, naked, to get 
away from Dow's product.

It is entirely possible that the Vietnik protestors had no animosity
toward their fellow Harvard students.  Rather, their animosity was
toward the manufacturer and seller of a product that burns little
girls to death.  It is also entirely possible that the Right-to-Lifer
protestors at Doctor Tiller's third-trimester-abortion clinic in Topeka, 
Kansas, had no animosity toward the pregnant ladies and girls who sought 
the Doctor's services, but rather that their animosity was toward a
Doctor who, sworn to devote his life to healing, was instead engaged
in burning six-, seven-, and eight-month unborn babies to death with
saline solution or tearing them to pieces in "Dilatation & Evacuation" 
procedures.

>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.   [J H Woodyatt]

It is easy to see how the Court's majority arrived at this conclusion.
The activity of the Vietnik protestors at Mallinckrodt Hall was
explicitly designed to prevent the Dow Chemical Company from 
recruiting workers to carry on its lawful business of dealing in death.  
The fact that their blockade also prevented Harvard students from 
exercising their freedom to choose where one wishes to apply for work 
does not imply any animosity on the Vietniks' part towards those
particular Harvard students, let alone towards Harvard students 
in general.  Are we to suppose that the "Ku Klux Klan Act" applied 
to these protestors' activities?

Let me commend Mr. Woodyatt for his fine, explanatory article, 
refreshingly free from the kind of passionate emotionality that
so often appears in the usual exchanges on this subject between
the Pro-Death side and Pro-Lifers like . . .

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
                                        (matt@amsaa.brl.mil)

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Newsgroups: misc.legal