First, regarding your use of the incendiary “terrorizing abortion clinics and their patients and staff” language borrowed from respondents’ brief, Scheidler et al were no more “terrorizing” people than did Rev. King and others who conducted sit-ins at lunch counters in the 1960s. Use of such language here simply strains credibilty. Even the jury found – as you pointed out – just “four acts OR THREATS of violence to any person OR PROPERTY.” Nobody, including the respondents, knows whether the jury’s findings alluded to acts of violence against persons, threats of violence against property, or some other combination of the above language. With due respect to Prof. Chemerinsky, the hyperbole stinks of desperation on the part of respondents, all whule insulting actual victims of terrorism by trivializing use of the term.

Also, FYI, the individual petitioners have no connection with Operation Rescue than by virtue of being co-petitioners. They are involved with a Chicago organization called the Pro-Life Action League.

Finally, respondents’ use of the nationwide injunction as the reason major abortion protests have largely died off is without merit, and it requires an unreasonable interpretation of FRCP 65(d) (which extends the scope of injunctions, at most, to “those persons in active concert or participation with” the named defendants).

The real reason the protests have lessened is because of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, passed in 1994, the questionable constitutionality of which is fodder for another post on another day. All of the predicate acts alleged by respondents pre-date FACE by a number of years, yet NOW et al — for reasons only they can divine — felt the need to press on and to take this case to trial four years after FACE. Lest there be any confusion, and contra various press releases of the day, the (re-)defeat of respondents before the Supreme Court will not result in a return to the heyday of Operation Rescue, because FACE has yet to be repealed or found unconstitutional.