Anti-Abortion Web Site Fined $107 Million

A federal jury on Tuesday ruled that an Internet Web site featuring blood-dripping fetuses and “wanted” posters targeting abortion providers constituted a real threat, ordering those responsible to pay $107.9 million in damages.

An eight-member jury--protected under a veil of anonymity amid the heavy security that surrounded the trial--deliberated four days before returning a verdict in the case that sought to stem the rising tide of anti-abortion violence. The defendants were two radical anti-abortion groups and 13 individuals.

Physicians and clinic managers hailed the decision as an important barrier against the dangerous fringe of the anti-abortion movement. But opponents said the landmark case provides a powerful weapon to silence a broad spectrum of political protest that until now has enjoyed protection under the Constitution.

“I think it shreds the 1st Amendment,” said Christopher Ferrara, an attorney for the American Catholic Lawyers Assn., who represented several of the defendants. “If these posters are threatening, then virtually any document that criticizes an abortionist by name is threatening. I think the effect on political protest will be devastating.”

Catherine Ramey, one of the defendants, compared the verdict to “asking Martin Luther King Jr. to pay money to the Ku Klux Klan.”

“This says that . . . if you’re up against a powerful industry--and the abortion industry is a billion-dollar industry--then you might as well pack away your picket signs and go home,” she added.

Militia Web sites, anti-government talk shows, radical environmental newsletters and hate group pamphlets could all come under the definition of “threats” under which the defendants were found liable Tuesday, critics of the decision said.

But the plaintiffs--who brought the case in the wake of the murders of seven abortion physicians and clinic workers in the last five years--said the Constitution has never sanctioned threats of violence and that the verdict provides an important message on behalf of those who face the prospect of shootings, bombings and acid attacks for providing a legal health care service.

“This verdict means to me that citizens are no longer willing to tolerate the domestic terrorism that has pervaded abortion services in this country for so many years,” said Dr. Elizabeth Newhall, a Portland clinic physician who became one of the plaintiffs in the case after being targeted on a “Deadly Dozen” poster accusing abortion doctors of “crimes against humanity.”

“The thought of needing such a law [to protect access to abortion clinics] was beyond my comprehension when I started practicing medicine,” Newhall said. “Today, my safety and my family’s safety depends on the courts upholding this law. . . . Americans are tired of the hassle, and tired of the fear.”

Movement Blamed for Dozens of Attacks

At issue was a violent faction of the anti-abortion movement that believes there is moral justification for killing abortion providers in defense of the unborn. The movement, according to the National Abortion Federation, has been responsible for 39 bombings, 99 acid attacks and 16 attempted murders over the last several years--as well as the October death of Dr. Barnett A. Slepian, who was killed when a sniper fired a bullet through the kitchen window of his New York home.

The Justice Department already had prosecuted successfully several criminal cases under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which prohibits the use of force or threats of force to prevent access to reproductive health services. But those--as well as several civil cases--involved overt threats that were clear violations of the law.

The case filed in Portland by Planned Parenthood, the Portland Feminist Women’s Health Center and four abortion physicians was the first to involve ominous statements that were not necessarily direct threats of imminent violence.

The defendants called them legitimate political protest; the plaintiffs said they had every reason to believe they were invitations to murder.

The Web site--which the jury found to be one of the “true threats” covered under the law--featured a solicitation to submit personal information about abortion physicians so they could one day be held to account for their actions before a Nuremberg-style tribunal. The site listed doctors by name, in some cases with home addresses, names of children and routes to work. It also crossed off the names of those killed and shaded over those who were wounded.

The “Deadly Dozen” poster listed doctors by name and home address and sought information “leading to arrest, conviction and revocation of license to practice medicine.” A similar poster targeting St. Louis physician Robert Crist offered a $5,000 reward to anyone who “successfully persuades Crist to turn from his child killing . . . to helping and healing those in need.”

Crist became a plaintiff in the case after an unknown gunman fired shots into his children’s playroom in the middle of the night. All of the physicians said they lived in fear after the posters were issued, knowing that several doctors had been killed after becoming targeted by similar posters. They bought bulletproof vests, installed security glass in their offices and blinds in their homes. Some hired bodyguards.

Portland physician James Newhall testified that he developed a firefight evacuation plan with his family and instructed his 6-year-old son to hide in the bathtub if gunshots rang out.

“Fear is every bit as powerful as the actual bombing,” plaintiffs’ attorney Martin London argued before the jury. “The terrorist doesn’t actually have to fulfill his threat. It could be a bluff and work nevertheless. . . . The bluff is every bit as intimidating.”

Assault on Free Speech Seen

The defendants said the jury’s finding of a threat in language that talks only about revoking someone’s license is a dangerous assault on free speech.

“This is terrifying, because what would not be a threat? Is the abortion industry in effect becoming a committee of censors that reviews your literature and says, ‘Well, we find it threatening’? “ Ferrara argued. “When they come for the posters, when will they come for the magazine articles, the banners?”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon said it will participate in the appeal of the case, raising again its argument that anti-abortion protesters be sanctioned for making threats, but only if they actually intended to make threats.

“Many Americans disagree about the wisdom and morality of abortion, but the ACLU firmly believes that violence and the threat of violence against providers of abortion services should not be allowed to determine the outcome of the debate,” said Michael Simon, a Portland attorney who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the ACLU.

“However, we also believe that the safety of the physicians and the providers can be protected without compromising the fundamental protections of free speech guaranteed by the 1st Amendment,” Simon said.

During the trial, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones imposed the definition of “threat” cited by current appellate case law, which requires only that the targets--in the context of the climate of abortion violence--viewed the posters as threatening.

Even Andrew Burnett, one of the lead defendants and a founder of the American Coalition of Life Activists, admitted under questioning that after the Deadly Dozen poster, “If I was an abortionist, I would be afraid.”

But Paul McMasters, a 1st Amendment expert for the Freedom Foundation, said the verdict leaves a wide band of political comment open to attack.

‘It Certainly Is an Important Case’

“I think there is no such thing as a smart bomb when it comes to punishing speech. In this case and others, there’s always a lot of collateral damage. I wish I could agree with the plaintiffs that this is not a landmark case, but if it isn’t, it certainly is an important case,” McMasters said.

“I think this opens the door for a government prosecutor to go after a militia Web site or radio show. . . . I think it’s possible, with a broad expansion of this kind of decision, to see the time where letters to the editor in a newspaper could very well end up putting both the writer and the newspaper in jeopardy,” McMasters said.

Indeed, lawyers for the plaintiffs said the verdict invites federal prosecutors to step forward and bring criminal cases against advocates of abortion violence.