AN UNAMBIGUOUS VICTORY FOR THE PRO-LIFE CAUSE

For years, radical pro-abortion groups like NOW have tried to kill off the pro-life movement by trying to get the courts to classify the national movement as a form of "racketeering." It's an obvious and ridiculous abuse of the RICO statutes, a set of laws meant as a weapon against real racketeers--the mob, drug cartels, and so forth--and clearly demonstrates just what such groups think of the right of free speech. In short, if they don't agree with it they don't like it very much.

Today, the Supreme Court said that RICO doesn't apply to, and therefore can't be used against, pro-life groups. The ruling was 8-1, with Justice John Paul Stevens in lonely dissent. His reasoning: the pro-life protests outside abortion clinics hurt their business. That's an odd application of free-market thinking coming from a justice who often votes to the left of Ralph Nader, but we'll take it if he starts applying it to other businesses. Perhaps the logging industry, which has to put up with idiots like Earth First, could co-opt his support.