No.
Not in the least!
~AKA "The Grammar Queen" 
Looks good to me!
Now, that's not to say that it couldn't be better written:
"Kopp is charged [under federal law] with obstructing access to an abortion clinic by slaying Slepian, a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence."
Fr. Philip
You are correct. Does it actually mean to say that obstructing access to an abortion clinic carries a mandatory life sentence? That's what it sounds like. The slaying portion seems an incidental point on how he went about obstructing access...
The substance of the sentence shocks me a little: there's a mandatory life sentence for obstructing access to an abortion clinic?
I understand a mandatory life sentence for murder, but for obstructing access--that's weird, at a minimum.
Yes, indeed, trying to stop abortion by killing someone can land you in the federal pen for life. The federal "Freedom of Access to Clinic Enterances Act," was passed by Congress in the wake of the Operation Rescue inititatives in the early '90s (and a couple of shootings of abortion clinic employees). It does indeed provide that anyone who, "by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services" commits a crime. "[I]f death results, [imprisonment shall] be for any term of years or for life."
Of course, it can also get you the death penalty under state law, as a Florida anti-abortion "rescuer" found out a couple of years ago.
What I find odd is that the focus isn't on the murder, but on the "obstructing access." It's as though the murder were just a sidenote.
"Meh, he murdered someone, whatever. Wait, he was blocking access to a clinic?! Where's my pitchfork!"
You get life for causing a death (in a pro-life way)?
Well, the feds couldn't get any jurisdiction over abortion practice unless they had a jurisdictional hook: Here, interstate commerce (under the Commerce Clause). So you couldn't be a federal criminal just by killing an abortionist. You could only become a crook by interfering in abortion commerce (here, by killing an abortionist).
Don't complain too much. This is the same theory we use to try to ban things like partial-birth abortion under federal law, and without it there would be little federal role in stopping abortion in a post-Roe/Casey world.
It is also the same theory we use to control toilet flush volume, and (attempt to) outlaw guns within a thousand feet of a school.
And I say to hell with it. These are exactly the sort of laws that the 9th and 10th Amendments were intended to prevent.
Commenting by HaloScan
