By Brian Carnell

Tuesday, June 5, 2001

Imagine my surprise on visiting The Nation's web site to discover that two of its writers were shocked that at a Florida businessman was portrayed as greedy at his extortion hearing.

The case is a bizarre one. Dr. James Scott Pendergraft opened an abortion clinic in the very conservative northern Florida city of Ocala. After he purchased the clinic building, he received a totally inappropriate letter from Marion County Board of Commissioners asking him to reconsider opening an abortion clinic in the town. The letter said that the Commissioners didn't want to see Ocala marred by contingents of pro- and anti-abortion protesters.

Now here's where things get weird. A business manager Pendergraft was taking advice from lied to Pendergraft about the extent of the anti-abortion contingent in Ocala. Specifically, the business manager told Pendergraft that Larry Cretul, chairman of the County Board of Commissioners, had told them that, "what happened in Alabama [where an abortion clinic had been bombed] is nothing compared to what's going to happen in Ocala." Pendergraft rightly interpreted that as a threat, but in fact Cretul had never made that statement, and he had tapes of his conversations with the business manager to prove it.

But Pendergraft didn't know that. Eventually Pendergraft filed suit against the city after it denied his request for additional police protection at the clinic. At a meeting to discuss a possible settlement, the Commissioners gave Pendergraft a low-balled figure of about $100,000. At that point, Pendergraft held up a newspaper headline which touted a $107 million settlement that an abortion clinic in Oregon had won, and said that he would be more than happy to take the case to trial saying, "Let the jury decide; the facts are the facts. We will bankrupt the county."

Based largely on that statement, Pendergraft was charged and convicted of attempting to extort the Commission.

One of the themes of the article in The Nation is, amazingly, that at his trial Pendergraft was unfairly portrayed as a greedy businessman. Hmmm...I wonder where prosecutors got that idea from? The article quotes Refuse and Resist! activist Tracie Stern as complaining,

the prosecution portrayed Pendergraft the way they like to portray abortion providers--as this money-grubbing doctor who doesn't care about women. The judge didn't play fair with the defense attorneys, and [US prosecuting attorney Mark] Devereaux was consistently belittling and belligerent. They were counting on conservative Ocala to bring them the verdict they wanted.

Somebody portraying a businessman as a money-grubber who doesn't care about his customers but is only after a quick buck. Because no one on the Left would ever use such a tactic.

Things get more bizarre when the article implies that Pendergraft's aggressive marketing campaign may have hurt his opportunities in the city. According to the article,

Yet the medical and feminist mainstream has been slow to come to Pendergraft's defense. Fellow abortion providers, divided by fear and fierce competition, have mostly turned a blind eye to his case. In a climate where the heads-down approach is the safest and most acceptable route for abortion providers, Pendergraft is a shameless marketer, taking full-page ads in the phone book and advertising on highway billboards and local radio stations. "Nobody I've heard suggests that he's not a top doctor and a caring guy," explains attorney Susan England, "but the community of providers is in denial. They have to be in denial or they won't get up in the morning."

Hmm...aggressive ads on billboards and local radio stations? I was waiting for the other foot to drop and see The Nation complaining about Pendergraft's use of an irrational means of communication to create a market for products that nobody needs. But apparently when you're advertising something that the busybodies on the Left approve of, that's completely different than when you're advertising something of which they don't approve (hopefully The Nation will follow on the heels of the Roman Catholic Church and publish an official guide as to what ads are forbidden as capitalist tools of manipulation and which ads are helping tell women in need about an important service).

Such developments are part of an interesting strategy on the part of the anti-abortion movement: if you can't beat the Left, join them. Clearly the odds of abortion being re-criminalized in the United States anytime soon is exceedingly small. However, taking a page from liberal and Left activists, that doesn't meant that activists can't hound abortion providers to death with excessive regulations and lawsuits which twist the intention of laws way past their breaking point.

This is a disappointing trend, but it's a little late in the game for magazines like The Nation to complain about such tactics after being such cheerleaders for the very same legal approach when it benefited their ideological position.

Source:

Abortion on Trial. Hillary Frey & Miranda Kennedy. The Nation, June 18, 2001.

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