NARAL Yanks Attack Ad on John Roberts, but Promises No Letup
by Fred Jackson, Bill Fancher, and Jody Brown
August 12, 2005
(AgapePress) - A national pro-abortion group has withdrawn a much-criticized television ad campaign which made it appear that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts supports violent "anti-abortion" protests. The NARAL Pro-Choice America ad depicted a woman disfigured by an abortion clinic bomb blast -- then implied that Judge Roberts was linked to clinic violence because he argued and won a case on behalf of abortion clinic protesters. But yesterday (Thursday) -- after a storm of protests from pro-life advocates -- NARAL announced it had decided to pull the 30-second ad. However, the abortion advocacy group says the controversy will not stop its plan to run another series of "anti-Roberts" ads in the future.
Critics of the ad were adamant that the premise of the ad was not factual and distorted the truth with the objective to mislead viewers. Ironically, one of those critical of the ad was pro-abortion U.S. Senator Arlen Specter. In a letter to NARAL president Nancy Keenan, the Pennsylvania Republican said the ad "unfairly attacks" Roberts and is "blatantly untrue and unfair in its assertions."
Specter also called into question NARAL's use of Supreme Court nominations as "fundraising events without appropriate regard for the subject matter involved." While Specter acknowledged that such advertising falls within the realm of free speech, he also expressed concern that Roberts' nomination, as well as those of others, might "provide an occasion for such advertising to get out of hand."
And the GOP lawmaker did not stop there. "May I also suggest that the NARAL advertisement is not helpful to the pro-choice case which I support," Specter wrote. "When NARAL puts on such an advertisement, in my opinion it undercuts its credibility and injures the pro-choice cause."
If indeed that would be the result, Sean Rushton of the Committee for Justice sees a silver lining in it. He says his organization was "almost glad" NARAL was running the ad because of their belief the ad would backfire. "The American people will see through this kind of tactic," Rushton says. "And it probably says more about NARAL and their agenda than about John Roberts."
He contends the ads show that pro-abortion groups like NARAL are not concerned with the availability of abortions for women. Those groups, he says, focus on "things like parental notification laws regarding 15-year-old girls [and] issues such as partial-birth abortion or late-term abortion" -- and according to Rushton, those are the kinds of things that abortion advocates "can't stomach seeing in any way regulated."
Wendy Wright | |
As for the long-term fallout of the NARAL ad on the Roberts nomination process, the pro-life group Concerned Women for America is hopeful that cancellation of the ad signifies the onset of what it calls "a debate based on truth rather than on political grandstanding." But CWA does not appear to be holding its breath for that to happen. CWA's Wendy Wright says that while NARAL responded to criticism by pulling the ad, her group remains concerned the pro-abortion group really has no plans to drop their "deceptive attack [on Roberts] for his successful defense of constitutional rights. Already," she notes, "NARAL has announced that the replacement ad will refer to Roberts' involvement in the Bray case -- and we fear that it will repeat the same false claim in a repackaged format."
The NARAL ad pulled this week referred to Roberts' involvement in Bray v. Alexandra Women's Health Clinic -- and falsely implied that because the nominee defended peaceful protests in that 1991 Supreme Court case, he supported abortion-clinic bombers. Says Wright of the pro-abortion group's assertion: "NARAL's misguided claim that pro-life activists are violent is finally being exposed for the lie that it is."
