It’s a Terri Schiavo Reunion in Aurora
Friar Frank Pavone from the Terri Schiavo shows up making sure the Circus gets bigger.
If you look at the letter to aldermen, Trombley included those in Aurora who oppose the clinic in his general smear. Whatever these people are, they are one removed from Scheidler and the League. And the answer on whether Scheidler and the League are violent was answered by the Supreme Court 8-1 and 8-0. Trombley took even that false assertion a step further.
This is his public argument, but I’ll assume he wont’ make that argument in court because it’s really silly. The argument Twombley made is:
The activists of the Pro-Life Action League who have been opposing our new facility are headquartered in Aurora and have a well-documented history of advocating violence against both persons and property as well as other related criminal activity.We think you will understand the urgency of our concerns when you consider the following facts about the Pro-Life Action League and its leader, Joe Scheidler.
Scheidler (along with a handful of other anti-abortion leaders) formed PLAN – the Pro-LIfe Action League. Scheidler called PLAN the “pro-life mafia” and proclaimed “a year of pain and fear” for anyone seeking or providing abortion.
After a six-week trial in 1998, a jury in Chicago unanimously found that the Pro-Life Action League Network orchestrated 121 crimes involving acts of threats of force or violence against women’s health facilities that offered abortion. These crimes proven at trial included beating a post-operative ovarian surgery patient over the head with a sign, knocking her unconscious and causing her to bleed from the sutures in her abdomen; seizing a clinic administrator by the throat, choking and bruising her; and slamming a clinic staff member and volunteer against the stairs (sending them to a hospital and causing permanent injuries) and destroying medications and equipment. Joe Scheidler personally praised the individuals who carried out some of these misdeeds, even taking credit for them….
Claiming that is libelous is silly. The court throwing out the conviction doesn’t say they weren’t tied to the violence, it says the law didn’t cover non-commercial action. The Court made a reasonable reading of the law, but it hardly leads one to conclude that there isn’t a strange coincidence of Joe Scheidler showing up and violence following.