[News-releases] NOW v. Scheidler Ruling: Feminists Vow to Continue Fighting

NOW Press Office
202-628-8669 Rebecca Farmer, x 116
202-785-8576 (fax)

NOW v. Scheidler Ruling Not the End: Feminists Vow to Continue Fighting for 
Women's Lives

Statement of NOW President Kim Gandy

February 26, 2003

With their shocking decision in NOW v. Scheidler, eight Supreme Court 
justices placed a higher value on tangible property than on women's 
liberty. A woman's right to seek medical services from a clinic, and the 
clinic's right to provide those services (long held to be "property" and 
therefore protected), is now under greater threat because this Court 
decided to protect only property that can be sold or traded.

NOW applauds Justice John Paul Stevens' dissent criticizing the majority's 
"murky" opinion and noting that the main beneficiaries of today's ruling 
are professional criminals. Even Chief Justice William Rehnquist admitted 
in the Court's opinion that Joe Scheidler and his co-conspirators committed 
crimes which "completely deprived respondents of their ability to exercise 
their property rights." However, the ruling went on to overturn decades of 
case law, making this a banner day for criminal kingpins. Tony Soprano 
would love this decision--it says you can shut down someone's business as 
long as you don't take possession of their property.

We filed the NOW v. Scheidler suit 17 years ago, and have used the 
Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act to protect women 
and clinic staff from a centrally orchestrated violent campaign to close 
abortion clinics nationwide. We won the first-ever nationwide injunction 
against anti-abortion clinic violence and, in fact, the violence did stop. 
Protestors still demonstrated and shouted outside the clinics, but the 
physical harm, property damage and trespassing ended.

With this reversal, NOW rededicates itself to the protection of women's 
legal right to abortion. We will work to ensure that the Freedom of Access 
to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) is enforced. But that is not enough. FACE is 
too limited and doesn't reach the organizers of the violence. We will use 
whatever is at our disposal to see to it that religious and political 
extremists do not resume their reign of terror at women's clinics. We are 
looking at every avenue, including the U.S.A. Patriot Act, in order to 
protect women, doctors and clinic staff from these ideological terrorists.