The Supreme Court's unanimous 8-0 decision this week rejecting claims by the National Organization for Women (Now) that demonstrations at abortion clinics are extortion and therefore punishable under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act was an important vote for freedom and free speech.

Those who might be doing a double take and wondering how a law, whose intent was to deal with mobsters using threats and violence to extort funds from legitimate businesses, can be relevant to protestors in front of abortions clinics intuitively get the point.

The fact that the opinion rejecting the claim that activism at abortion clinics has anything to do with racketeering and extortion was written by pro-choice Judge Stephen Breyer shows that this case was not about abortion but about the appropriate application of law. I am mystified how a suit of so little merit can cause as much disruption as this one has and indeed can make its way to the highest court in the land.

Although simple logic finally prevailed, this case languished for 20 years, and over this time was a source of intimidation to those who wanted to express their first amendment rights in expressing opposition to the operation of abortion clinics.

Even G. Robert Blakely, the author of the RICO, took the position that the act, which focused on profits earned from criminal activity, had nothing to do with the claims NOW made. Yet the suit refused to die.

If one applied the simplest logic to the misapplication of law here, the obvious truth emerges. Without ongoing businesses, what would there be to extort? Criminals are parasites and it is in the interest of parasites that the creatures off which they live remain viable.

Those protesting in front of abortion clinics want to them to close. Their object is to produce inviability and termination.

The common ground between the two? Zero.

Consider the implications had the National Organization for Women prevailed in this lawsuit. Disruptive, but non-violent protest, which always has played an important role in our free society, would have been placed under ongoing threat of RICO.

Dr. Martin Luther King, under this sense of things, could well have been considered a racketeer.

This is the world that the National Organization for Women was perfectly comfortable trying to bring to us and I believe speaks legions of what motivates these folks. Continued...