In a distressing new trend that all serious abortion-rights activists should condemn immediately, a pro-choice group is offering online payments to restaurant staff who spot conservative Supreme Court justices at Washington-area restaurants and tip off protesters so they can harass the justices. It’s difficult to overstate how counterproductive such tactics are to the legitimate cause of restoring women’s biological rights — a cause that can only lose mainstream support with radical and provocative stunts like this.
Fury at the Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade last month is real, and justified. The new majority zealously eviscerated Roe at the first opportunity, putting their own ideological agenda above a woman’s equal right to control her body, above respect for settled law and above the opinion of a clear majority of Americans. They have undermined the right of self-determination and endangered the health and lives of countless women and girls in much of America. The high court richly deserves its deep and likely lasting loss of legitimacy across the nation.
But no one deserves to be hounded out of a restaurant by a mob, no matter how justified the cause might be. That’s what happened to Justice Brett Kavanaugh recently at Morton’s the Steakhouse, a toney District of Columbia restaurant. When the restaurant later issued a statement defending Kavanaugh’s right to eat there unharassed, protesters harassed the restaurant chain itself, with online trolling and a flood of fake reservations made under prank names.
These are cheap theatrics that despoil a valid and important protest movement. More ominous is the organized effort by pro-choice activists to offer what amount to bounty rewards for restaurant workers who tip off the group about conservative justice sighting at their tables, so protesters can be sent there. As The Washington Post reports, the group (we refrain from naming it here, to avoid helping spread their dangerous campaign) is offering $50 to restaurant staff who tip them off to a justice’s sighting, and $200 if the justice is still there when protesters arrive. If violence ensues, do they get a bonus?
The response from the Biden administration should be a clear and unequivocal rejection of such tactics. Instead, it has offered mixed messaging. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told an interviewer: “Any public figure should always, always be free from violence, intimidation and harassment, but should never be free from criticism or people exercising their First Amendment rights.”
But these tactics are intimidation and harassment, and could lead to violence. The proper place to protest this and other Supreme Court outrages is at the ballot box. The continuing fight for abortion rights is too crucial to let it be commandeered by those who will damage its legitimacy and drive off allies.
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