Media Ignore Court Telling Obama Admin to Back Off Pro-Lifer

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Apr 4, 2012   |   3:01PM   |   Washington, DC

The mainstream media is ignoring a case in which the Obama administration was forced to pay $120,000 to a pro-life advocate it targeted with a lawsuit and false claims that pro-life sidewalk counselor Susan Pine was violating federal law.

Pine counsels women who are considering abortion and provides help, resources, and support for women who choose life. Without any evidence of wrongdoing, Attorney General Holder accused Pine of obstructing the entrance to an abortion clinic in violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (“FACE”).

Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice had sought to levy thousands of dollars in fines against the pro-life activist as well as seeking a permanent injunction banning her from continuing her faithful 20-year ministry outside an abortion clinic in West Palm Beach, Florida. The Obama administration looked to appeal the case after a judge said the Obama administration was out of line to bring the lawsuit but the Department of Justice (DOJ) has dropped its appeal in Holder v. Pine after losing.

As Tom Blumer of Newscasters writes, if not for news outlets like LifeNews, most Americans would not be exposed to the case because the mainstream media has ignored it:

The Department of (I don’t know what kind of) Justice has decided to drop its case again prolife sidewalk counselor Mary Susan Pine and pay her $120,000 in legal fees. DOJ had no case in the first place.

If this were an antiwar protester or someone else favored by the left, this would be “DOJ run amok” news. But you will search in vain for a story about Ms. Pine at the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times (searches are on “Pine abortion,” not in quotes). You will find 18 references to her in a Google News search on “Pine abortion” (not in quotes, sorted by date, with duplicates), only one of which is an establishment press outlet (Fox News).

Holder and DOJ think they can just do whatever they want, and they’re probably right — because as noted earlier, the press could care less about a drop-dead obvious instance of politically-driven prosecutorial abuse.

Judge Ryskamp concluded that “the evidence could not lead a rational jury to find that Ms. Pine’s conduct [i.e., having peaceful conversations with clinic visitors on a public sidewalk] constituted a physical obstruction within the meaning of FACE.” The Judge chastised Holder for seeking to apply federal law in a clearly unconstitutional manner, saying, “Stretching the terms of FACE to apply to this case…so that a desire to provide people with information about alternatives to abortion constitutes an unlawful motive, would unjustifiably impinge on Ms. Pine’s First Amendment rights.”