The Nuremberg Files Web site asks people to send photos and videotapes of doctors' homes, cars and friends RELATED VIDEO CNN's Rusty Dornin reports Windows Media 28K 56K

January 7, 1999
Web posted at: 10:47 p.m. EST (0347 GMT)

PORTLAND, Oregon (CNN) -- Tight security met the jury pool as a lawsuit went to trial over an Internet site listing personal information about doctors who perform abortions.

The site includes the names and in some cases the addresses, license plate numbers and family members of abortion providers. The names of doctors who have been killed are crossed out; those who have been wounded are in gray.

The site has existed for several years but got new attention after the killing of Dr. Barnett Slepian in suburban Buffalo, New York. Slepian's name is one of those crossed out. He was killed by a sniper who fired into his home in October.

Planned Parenthood, a women's health center and five doctors filed the multimillion-dollar lawsuit in 1995, claiming the site violates a federal law that bars activists from inciting violence against abortion doctors and their patients.

Jurors in U.S. District Court in Portland will be asked to decide whether The Nuremberg Files (www.christiangallery.com/atrocity ), as the Web site is called, is protected by the First Amendment -- or is a thinly veiled hit list

"Sites like Nuremberg are a threat to doctors because the anti-abortion movement in the United States follows up on threats like that with violence," said Bonnie Jones, a lawyer at New York's Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. "These are not words in isolation. They are typically followed up with murder."

As jury selection began, court officials limited parking around the downtown courthouse and U.S. marshals searched spectators.

There was no sign of protesters outside the building Thursday, though Operation Rescue abortion opponents have vowed to demonstrate.

"The pro-life community and Christians believe that this is a landmark case, because what's happening is Planned Parenthood and the ACLU want to silence the pro-life message," said Troy Newman, a spokesman for Operation Rescue. "Christianity has believed for ages that the child in utero is deserving of life, and when you take that life, it is in fact murder.

"This is a freedom of speech issue, and we're going to use the First Amendment to declare that abortion is murder," Newman added. "We're going to do it in front of the courthouse and courtroom, and we're going to do it across the nation."

In opening statements defense attorneys argued not one threatening word was used in the posters

The 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act has been used against people who attacked doctors or clinics but has never been used to challenge a Web site. Named in the lawsuit are the American Coalition of Life Advocates, an umbrella group for several anti-abortion groups nationwide, and Advocates for Life Ministries, a radical Portland-based group.

Michael Bray, one of the defendants, said The Nuremberg Files is a form of political protest. He called the suit "a horrendous interference with freedom of speech."

Bray, a Reformed Lutheran pastor from Bowie, Maryland, spent nearly four years in prison for setting fires to clinics in the 1980s. He warned that a victory for Planned Parenthood could backfire.

"If you are blocked of public protests, then people are left saying, `What are we going to do?'" Bray said. "It leaves only one option: the covert use of force -- vandalism, blowing up places and terminating doctors."

The site was created by Neal Horsley, a 54-year-old computer programmer from Carrollton, Georgia. Horsley is not named in the suit. He has said the purpose of the site is to build a case against doctors for "crimes against humanity."

Dr. Ray Guggenheim, a retired Portland obstetrician whose name appears on the site, said the list has had a clear effect on him.

"You can see the doctors they've crossed off. You tell me, is that free speech or intimidation?" he said. "It tends to make you think twice about what you believe in."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.