Published in the Chicago Sun Times, July 11, 2002
by NOW President Kim Gandy

For 14 years the Pro-Life Action Network used violence and force to keep women from exercising their constitutional right to make decisions about abortion. Not content to rely on their First Amendment rights to picket, protest, petition, lobby and speak out on the subject, PLAN's leaders, including Joseph Scheidler, called for ''nasty'' tactics to force clinics to close. When local lawsuits failed to stop PLAN from ransacking clinics and attacking patients, the National Organization for Women filed a federal suit to protect women's freedom.

In 1993, the Supreme Court unanimously held that PLAN was subject to the federal racketeering act (RICO), even though its crimes were not done for money. The issue before the Supreme Court now is similar: whether the fact that PLAN did not get money from its crimes immunizes it from prosecution.

Your July 9 editorial suggests that because PLAN was engaged in ''protest,'' it should be exempt from federal extortion laws and RICO. The same logic would exempt the attack on the World Trade Center, as well as the tactics of the Ku Klux Klan.

You are correct that advocacy groups should not be held liable ''for the excesses of their most zealous members, unless those excesses were part of the group's official mandate,'' and that is not what happened in this case. As the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed, PLAN and Operation Rescue (operated by PLAN) authorized and ratified each of the 121 crimes that led to the verdict. What's more, the jury made an explicit finding that each of the defendants specifically intended that these crimes be committed.

You imply that free speech is at issue in this case, when in fact the Supreme Court refused to review the First Amendment issue, thus reaffirming that violence is not protected by the Constitution. This case is not about where ''non-violent protest'' ends and violent crimes begin. NOW treasures First Amendment rights and never suggested to the judge or jury that PLAN's cruel but protected speech (e.g., calling women ''murderers,'' ''whores'' and the like) was criminal. We never suggested that a mere sit-in, or even a mere blockade, was a RICO violation. Every one of the 121 crimes that the jury found PLAN committed clearly involved acts or threats of unlawful force or violence.

PLAN's tactics are the antithesis of those taught by Dr. Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi and the other revered leaders of true nonviolent protest. If we didn't know it before Sept. 11, it is now clear that the most dangerous criminals are not those who use violence to get money, but those who use it to further their ''religious,'' ''moral'' or ''political'' ends.