RICO outrage: Are "pro-lifers" really mafia mobsters?, The

This past April, a federal jury in Chicago convicted several anti-abortion activists and their organizations of extortion (including the intent to incite violence) under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a law drafted in 1970 to combat the activities of organized crime. The suit (NOW v. Scheidler) was originated 12 years ago by the National Organization for Women against, among others, Joe Scheidler, the Executive Director of the Pro-Life Action League.

We have known Mr. Scheidler for years; he is a giant in the anti-abortion movement and an activist committed to using only peaceful means of protest. NOW's "victory" is a great injustice to him and a staggering blow to the First Amendment rights of all Americans, as the writers in our following special section agree.

First to discuss the RICO case and its implications is John Leo, who explains how RICO allowed the "mostly low-level offenses" of the anti-abortion protestors to be "lumped together and seen as a nationwide conspiracy to intimidate abortion doctors and patients," which should have had the ACLU up in arms. We then go to G. Robert Blakey, the Notre Dame law professor who actually wrote RICO: he says it is a "legal outrage" that the RICO law is being used as "a weapon of terror" against civil protest, and cautions "Those who love the First Amendment ought not rest so easily at night in light of what NOW has so wrongly wrought."

Dennis Byrne is a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times; he has written a sort of backdrop piece for us, describing Chicago as the once proud site of a long line of social protests (remember when free speech advocates even defended the right of the Nazis to march in surburban Skokie?). Yet Chicago's press and politicians seem all in favor of silencing anti-abortion protestors. Next, Robyn Blumner, who is pro-choice, observes that NOW's win is "the Constitution's loss . . . RICO was enacted to bankrupt the Mafia, not to bring down philosophical opponents."

Finally, we bring you two columns which point out that the RICO ruling is just one more in a line of unjust legal decisions aimed at quashing anti-abortion protestors-and that the same tactics could have been used to cripple the civil rights movement in the 60s. Michael Uhlmann shows that the legal system has employed a double standard when it comes to considering abortion cases where: "the normal rules of judicial review were twisted or suspended" and abortion protestors are being denied rights "enjoyed by everyone else." Paul Greenberg agrees, and warns: "What has been done to Joseph Scheidler can now be done to anyone who speaks against the household gods of the day.... It is no longer enough that abortionists should be able to ply their trade as if they were just another convenience store. Now the rest of us must keep quiet about it."

But of course Greenberg won't, nor will Mr. Scheidler, nor will this journal.

MARIA MCFADDEN

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