Don't cry "wolf" unless there's really a wolf at the door

Frankly, I think much of the media coverage of today's Supreme Court ruling on abortion protests is terribly simplistic and misleading. For example, this article's headline reads, "Supreme Court backs Abortion Protesters."

The headline and the first paragraph create the impression that this was an anti-abortion decision, probably a result of the new appointments tipping the Court. It wasn't that at all.

In fact, what the Court did was to deny use of the Racketeering laws and a 55 year-old law to prevent extortion as a device to prevent protests at abortion clinics. As Stephen Breyer correctly pointed out, in 1994 Congress enacted a law specifically designed to protect abortion clinics from the excesses of some protesters. As the article states, once you read it closely, many social activists and the AFL-CIO joined in the suit to stop the use of these laws to prevent protests, fearing they could be used to stop other legitimate protests as well.

I'm quite sure I would have voted the same way the Court did on this one. There's much to worry about regarding this Court and Roe v. Wade, but this particular decision isn't part of it.

If progressives and the press complain about this kind of thing, we may end up having cried "wolf" once too often.