Summary
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Update Aug. 12: NARAL said it would pull its ad off the air after receiving wide criticism from its own allies in the abortion-rights movement. NARAL President Nancy Keenan said the ad had been "misconstrued" by many people. But she continued to defend the ad as "completely accurate" and criticized FactCheck.org.
Analysis
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Update Aug. 12: After we posted this article, many of NARAL's allies in the abortion fight criticized the ad and called for NARAL to pull it off the air, and some of them did so publicly:
---Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, said Aug 10 that she was "deeply upset and offended" by the ad and said it "does step over the line into the kind of personal character attack we shouldn't be engaging in." As quoted in the New York Times , she said: "As a pro-choice person, I don't like being placed on the defensive by my leaders. NARAL should pull it and move on."
---Walter Dellinger, a prominent NARAL ally and former acting solicitor general during the Clinton administration, sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee Aug. 10 calling NARAL's ad "unfair and unwarranted" and a "mistake." He said he was speaking out to stop a "downward spiral of politics." Dellinger said he disagreed with Roberts in the Bray case but added: "It is unfair to suggest that John Roberts, in advancing a somewhat narrow interpretation of the 1871 statute, was supporting 'violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber' – as unfair as it would be to suggest that the six Justices who were part of the majority in Bray joined a decision supporting violent fringe groups."
---Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican supporter of abortion rights and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to NARAL on Aug. 11 calling the ad "blatantly untrue and unfair" and urging them to cancel it. He added: "When NARAL puts on such an advertisement, in my opinion it undercuts its credibility and injures the pro-choice cause."
NARAL responded Aug. 11 by telling Specter it would cancel the ad, saying: "We . . . regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record."
But NARAL continued to defend the content of the ad. President Nancy Keenan sent a letter to FactCheck.org calling the ad "completely accurate" and saying our conclusion that the ad is false "should be retracted."
Footnote: We are posting the full text of NARAL's rebuttal letter here as a courtesy to NARAL and as a service to our readers, even though we disagree strongly with what it says.
Nancy Keenan's Letter
NARAL had been circulating the rebuttal widely to reporters and by email to many of our readers even before they sent it to us, and we received a number of requests for our response. We make these brief points:
---The letter from Walter Dellinger shows that even a prominent attorney who supports a legal right to abortion sees the Bray case in the same light we do, and contrary to NARAL's ad.
---Nancy Keenan herself said during the Aug. 8 news conference announcing the ad: "I want to be very clear that we are not suggesting that Mr. Roberts condones or supports clinic violence. I know he said he finds bombing and murder abhorrent." Yet her ad conveys the opposite, showing pictures of a bombed clinic and a bombing victim while saying that Roberts supported a clinic bomber and violent fringe groups and that he excuses violence.
After considering NARAL's arguments, we stand by our judgment that their ad is false. The message contained in the juxtaposition of words and powerful images is that Roberts condoned the mayhem being shown on screen, which even Ms. Keenan has stated is untrue. We are not retracting our article. Instead, it is NARAL that is withdrawing its ad.
--Brooks Jackson
"NARAL continued to defend the content of the ad. President Nancy Keenan sent a letter to FactCheck.org calling the ad "completely accurate" and saying our conclusion that the ad is false 'should be retracted.'"
Frankly, Keenan and her band of radicals look nuts.
Absolutely nuts.
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