Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Sept. 4 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh repeats the unsupported claim, first made a year ago, that Planned Parenthood officials "incorrectly accused" anti-abortion activists of having a "well-documented history of advocating violence against both persons and property." Unruh again asserts that the claims "apparently were drawn from an old court case against Scheidler and the League brought by the National Organization for Women on behalf of abortion clinics nationwide. But any accusation in that case later was turned into a 'legal nullity,' ...because of the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions to reject the claims on votes of 8-1, and 8-0."
But as we noted the last time Unruh reported this, declaring something a "legal nullity" doesn't mean they didn't happen in the first place. Further, the Supreme Court didn't reject the claims as never having happened at all; it rejected them as constituting a violation under the federal RICO organized crime statute.
In the article, Unruh and the activists in question, the Pro-Life Action League, its leader, Joe Scheidler, and his son Eric, offer no evidence that any specific claim made by Planned Parenthood is false or that anything declared a "legal nullity" didn't actually happen -- just a lot of baseless asserting by Eric Scheidler and other anti-abortion activists that Planned Parenthood "has been granted a license to lie" because their libel suit against Planned Parenthood was mostly dismissed after a judge ruled that Planned Parenthood's statements were protected under a new Illinois state law that offers greater legal protection to citizens speaking out on issues.
