ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 23, 1997 TAG: 9701230027
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
A U.S. District Court judge in New York deserves congratulations for a ruling that, in effect, protests the growing willingness of abortion-rights defenders to put Americans' protest rights at risk. The judge deserves credit even and especially at a time of dastardly bomb attacks on abortion clinics.
The case involves two demonstrators arrested for sitting in the driveway of the Women's Medical Pavilion in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. The protesters, Bishop George Lynch and Brother Christopher Moscinski, should have been arrested: They were trespassing on clinic grounds and obstructing its entrance. Indeed, they doubtless meant to be arrested. They'd been arrested more than 20 times in previous clinic protests.
The question is whether, under the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994, the judge was required to find the pair in criminal contempt of a prior court injunction not to engage in such protests.
Amid increasing resort to terrorist violence, the peaceful nature of the Dobbs Ferry demonstration isn't irrelevant. The two men verbally threatened no one. They simply sat in the clinic's driveway, praying and holding rosary beads. Finding that they were acting out of religious convictions rather than contempt for the court, Judge John Sprizzo declined to impose federal, criminal sanctions. This was his prerogative as the fact-finding judge in the case.
It was also a show of respect for a principled political tradition - the philosophy and exercise of nonviolent protest - which can be traced from Henry David Thoreau to Martin Luther King and the Berrigan brothers.
By all means, arrest, prosecute and convict anti-abortion demonstrators for trespassing and for any other crimes they commit - especially assault. By all means, too, protect the right of women to visit medical facilities without fear of physical intimidation.
But also worry about a law that focuses on anti-abortion protests - adding special, federal penalties for attempts to block access to clinics. It comes perilously close to targeting specific content of political expression.
The 1994 law does include provisions meant to protect protest that doesn't restrict the rights of others. But the prospect of heavy criminal sanctions, on top of the local trespassing charges for which the two men were arrested, is surely a legitimate concern for a judge respectful of the difference between common criminal activity and conscience-driven dissent.
Critics of Sprizzo's decision point out that abortion is legal. So was slavery in Thoreau's day, segregation in King's, and the nuclear-armed Cold War state in the Berrigans'. Twenty-four years after Roe vs. Wade, this newspaper continues to support reproductive rights. But you don't have to oppose them to want other rights protected as well.
LENGTH: Medium: 52 linesby CNB