Abortion Opponents

In his Column Right, “Time to Expose the Abortion Distortion” (Oct. 3), Joe Farah decries a California Court of Appeal opinion which supposedly ordered five “peaceful, nonviolent, law-abiding abortion opponents” to pay $100,000 in attorneys’ fees to the Feminist Women’s Health Center, which obtained a permanent injunction against their activities.

Characterizing the five allegedly “ordinary working people” of doing nothing but engaging in “ordinary forms of protest,” Farah sees this punishment as indicative of a double standard of justice, which suppresses anti-abortion activity while protecting the right to abortion.

I was the trial attorney in this case. Farah’s defense of the conduct of these anti-abortion fanatics is an apology for patently illegal, violent actions taken with the intent to deprive women of their constitutional right to freedom of choice, including abortion. As the Court of Appeal said in deciding this case:

“Even the most naive person would have known defendants’ conduct--obstructing access to a lawful enterprise and engaging in acts of assault and harassment to prevent women who had expressed disinterest in defendants’ views from exercising the constitutional right to abortion--is not absolved by invoking the protections afforded by the First Amendment and Article I, Section 2. When a person oversteps the bounds of protected speech, civil and criminal liability may attach.”

These defendants could have avoided all monetary sanctions, had they only agreed to a court order that only imposed minimal limitations on their freedom of speech. The court order ensured that passage to the door was clear; prohibited blocking of the door; prohibited yelling or producing loud noises, which interfered with the clinic operation; photographing or videotaping clinic patients or staff; recording license plate numbers at the clinic; trespassing on the clinic’s parking lot; interfering with automobiles entering or leaving the parking lot, and action with others to carry out these acts.

Because the lawyers for the defendants wished to pursue clearly losing legal issues and pushed this case to trial, the Feminist Women’s Health Center was forced to expend time and resources. The lawyers are themselves right-wing religious fanatics, paid first by the Rutherford Institute and now by the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom to pressan anti-abortion agenda. Because the decision benefited all women who asserted their freedom of choice, the case met the standard for an award of attorneys’ fees.

These picketers were a militant minority who considered themselves above the law, and it is appropriate that they recompense the health clinic for the costs of the trial.

MARK E. MERIN

Sacramento