On February 28th, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that could add to the increasing difficulty women face in obtaining reproductive health services. NOW says that if the Court's 8-0 decision in Scheidler, et al., v. National Organization for Women (NOW), et al. and Operation Rescue v. NOW, et al. ushers in a return to clinic violence in the United States, the organization is ready to fight in every jurisdiction.

For two decades, NOW has pursued every legal strategy, including three Supreme Court cases, to stave off the violent attacks that gripped this country from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. This case was brought under the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, and had been one of the organization's most successful long-term strategies. A federal jury had found unanimously that these defendants had engaged in a nationwide criminal enterprise to close women's health clinics through extortion, violence and threats of violence, and specified over a hundred acts in furtherance of their efforts. The filing of the Scheidler case and the resulting injunction, which protected clinics nationwide, contributed to the dramatic reduction in clinic violence that we have witnessed in recent years. Without strong protections against clinic assaults, the legal right to abortion could become meaningless.

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