THE unregulated Internet was facing its sternest challenge last night after a United States jury awarded more than $100 million ( £60 million) to abortion doctors who said their safety was threatened by the inclusion of their names on a website "wanted" list.
The anti-abortionists behind the site had also distributed posters naming doctors they accused of crimes against humanity. One of those named, Elizabeth Newhall, said of the verdict: "It means that citizens are no longer willing to tolerate the domestic terrorism that has pervaded abortion services in this country for so many years."
But hardline pro-lifers and civil rights campaigners - for very different reasons - denounced the judgment. At the centre of the case is The Nuremberg Files website listing the names and addresses of more than 200 doctors - compared to Nazis - and showing photographs of aborted foetuses.
"I have no intention of giving money to people who kill children," said Catherine Ramey, one of the defendants, outside the court in Portland, Oregon. "That would be like asking Martin Luther King Jr to pay money to the Ku Klux Klan."
Legal authorities said the ruling might violate the US constitution's first amendment, which guarantees the right to free speech.
"It's tempting but very dangerous to permit long-standing first amendment standards to be compromised in order to deal with this outrageous form of expression. But if we do, it will come back to haunt us," said Robert O'Neil of the Thomas Jefferson Centre for the Protection of Free Expression in Charlottsville, Virginia.
Christopher Ferrara, a lawyer for the American Catholic Lawyers Association, who represented several of the defendants, said: "I think the ruling shreds the first amendment. If these posters are threatening then virtually any document that criticises an abortionist by name is threatening. The effect on political protest will be devastating."
The Oregon jury of eight, protected by anonymity and heavy security, awarded damages of $107.9 million against two anti-abortion organisations and 12 activists it found to be in breach of a 1994 statute outlawing threats against abortion providers. The jury agreed unanimously that the posters and website were "a true threat by one or more of the defendants to do bodily harm, assault or kill any of the plaintiffs".
Four doctors and the pro-choice group Planned Parenthood sued at the end of a decade in which the most extreme wing of the anti-abortion movement is said to have been responsible for 39 bombings, 99 acid attacks, 16 attempted murders and seven killings. The issue was given renewed urgency three months ago with the murder of Dr Barnett Slepian by a sniper at his home in Buffalo, New York state. The sniper has not been caught.
Slepian's name was crossed off The Nuremberg Files site (www.christiangallery.com/atrocity) of "deadly doctors" hours after the killing. The names of those who are wounded are listed in grey.
Slepian's widow Lynne said yesterday that the ruling was long overdue.
"It's just the tip of the iceberg, but these low-lifes are so slippery, slimy and sleazy I'm sure they'll find a way to get out of paying."
In fact, it seems that they have already done so. The defendants, who intend to appeal, prepared themselves for the case by transferring assets, including homes and bank accounts, to others to make them "judgment-proof".
But Kathy Bachman, of Planned Parenthood, said this was irrelevant. "That really is not what we're after. We're after the safety of our patients, the safety of our staff, the ability to provide a constitutionally legal procedure to women who want it."
The Nuremberg Files site says that its purpose is not to threaten medical staff but to gather information which could be used if termination was ever deemed a crime against humanity.
Whatever happens in the appeal court, the doctors are not convinced that their lives will be any safer. "I think there is always going to be a threat," said Dr James Newhall, one of those who sued. "I'm not going to give away my [bulletproof] vest."
