A LURID anti-abortion internet site that publishes the names and addresses of doctors who perform abortions beneath graphics of dripping blood, is exercising freedom of speech, an American court has ruled.
The Nuremberg Files, based in Georgia, compares America's legal acceptance of abortion to the Nazi Holocaust. On its site, it features photographs of dead foetuses and refers to doctors who perform abortions as "baby butchers".
It includes the home and business addresses of doctors, as well as the names and details of their families, encouraging opponents of abortion to make their feelings known to them.
A spate of violent attacks on abortion clinics and doctors led to calls to shut down The Nuremberg Files. Critics said the site went far beyond simply advocating a position and instead incited violence. Doctors who were featured on "Wanted" posters on the website took to wearing bulletproof vests and travelling to work with police protection.
Two years ago, a federal jury in Oregon gave £71 million in damages to Planned Parenthood, a pro-abortion family planning organisation, a clinic and four doctors. They had sued the American Coalition of Life Activists, members of which ran The Nuremberg Files, and several individuals associated with it, accusing them of advocating "justifiable homicide" of doctors who provided abortions.
During the early and mid-1990s, there was a spate of bombings and arson attacks on abortion clinics and violent attacks on doctors and nurses, several of whom were murdered.
In its unanimous ruling on Wednesday, the federal appeals court in San Francisco said the ACLA had merely exercised its right to free speech. Judge Alex Kozinski said:"Extreme rhetoric and violent action have marked many political movements in American history. As a result, much of what was said even by non-violent participants in this movement acquired a tinge of menace."
The judges found that while the ACLA's statements were sometimes "pungent, even highly offensive", they did not make direct threats of violence.