In a Jan. 25 editorial the Tribune expressed fear that the Supreme Court went too far in making mass picketing against an abortion clinic to close it down actionable for damages under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
The Tribune would be the first one to attack any union engaged in mass picketing to keep out strikebreakers. I would suggest that mass picketing against strikebreakers has a greater moral imperative than closing down an abortion clinic. The anti-abortionists are not suffering any real loss when a woman gets an abortion; a mass picketer against a strikebreaker faces real job loss.
Unlike the anti-abortion protester, the striker is not trying to close down a business permanently, but only temporarily. The courts have always limited mass picketing by injunctions, and the police have historically protected strikebreakers crossing picket lines.
As a former history teacher, I also take personal offense at Operation Rescue’s comparing itself to the abolitionists. The abolitionists for one thing were harassed and harried. Elijah Lovejoy was lynched at Alton for running an abolition newspaper. What injury and harassment has Operation Rescue suffered? Abolitionists rescued runaway slaves from a fate far worse than the abortion Operation Rescue is “saving” women from.
