Will the Court Be Women’s Refuge From Mobs? : Abortion: Bush wants to bar federal law that has protected clinics from vigilantes.

Last I heard, women still had a constitutional right to decide for themselves whether to bear a child. Granted, that right has been watered down by the Supreme Court, especially for poor women and teen-agers. But even in its weakened state, the Constitution still protects a grown woman’s right to go to a private doctor for an abortion--doesn’t it?

Not if George Bush’s Justice Department has anything to say about it. Having failed to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade, Bush’s team is back, in Bray vs. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, the only abortion-related case on the court’s docket so far this fall.

Where a woman’s right to choose is at stake, George Bush is willing to replace the law of the land with vigilante mob rule. Taking the side of violent mobs that block women’s access to abortion clinics, the Bush Justice Department claims that federal judges are powerless to stop organizations like Operation Rescue.

In recent years, mobs organized and egged on by Operation Rescue and condoned by the Bush Administration have repeatedly blockaded abortion clinics, forcing them to close. In the process, hundreds of women--patients and staff--had to flee, often at risk to their lives.

The strategy in almost all these cases is the same: Cars carrying patients to clinics are surrounded and rocked while terrified women huddle inside them, tires are slashed and patients’ and doctors’ identities are traced through license plates to facilitate harassment. Local officials, including the police, have been unable or unwilling to stop these confrontations.

The spectacle of lawless mobs preventing women from exercising their constitutional rights has led numerous distinguished federal judges in courts across the country to invoke the Ku Klux Klan Act. They have held that this federal civil-rights statute, passed in 1871 to give federal judges power to prevent mob violence aimed at African-Americans, protects women as well.

The federal injunctions sought by the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund and others are effective in blocking Operation Rescue’s tactics. When Operation Rescue used mob rule to close down abortion facilities in Wichita, Kan., last year, a determined federal judge, Patrick Kelly, broke the blockade with a Ku Klux Klan Act injunction. When Operation Rescue threatened to blockade clinics in Buffalo, N.Y., last winter, an energetic response by clinic supporters coupled with a vigorous federal injunction broke the blockade. When Operation Rescue tried to disrupt clinics in New York, Maryland and Virginia, Ku Klux Klan Act injunctions stopped them.

In Bray vs. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, the Bush Justice Department hopes to give Operation Rescue a new chance to torment women by arguing that federal judges lack power to use the Ku Klux Klan Act to protect women’s access to medical treatment. It’s not the federal government’s business, the Bush lawyers argue, to enforce the federal Constitution against mobs. Leave it to local authorities.

In 1871, when mobs threatened newly freed slaves, only the federal government could protect them. In 1957, when mobs threatened to prevent the integration of Little Rock High School, only the federal courts could control them. In 1992, when mobs threaten to hold women hostage for seeking to exercise a constitutional right, the federal courts should be there to protect them.

The Supreme Court initially heard arguments in Bray last October, before the appointment of Clarence Thomas. The case has been scheduled for reargument on Tuesday. If the court rules in support of vigilante mobs, the nation will have taken a terrible step away from justice and toward anarchy. After women, whose rights will be next?