NARAL did itself no favors with ad

There is a case to be made that John Roberts is no friend of abortion rights and that confirming him as a Supreme Court justice would speed the demise of Roe v. Wade. That case can be made calmly and convincingly, supported by the record.

Unfortunately, NARAL Pro-Choice America wasn’t content with the calm and convincing. The national abortion-rights organization opted instead for the chain saw massacre approach that is becoming the norm in American politics. Ideological victory goes to whichever side can paint the other, quickest and most indelibly, as an extremist.

Based on a brief Roberts wrote in a 1991 case, NARAL produced a television ad so deceptive that even some pro-choice figures condemned it. It was “far too intemperate and far too personal,” said Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice. “Blatantly unfair and untrue,” said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that will conduct Roberts’ confirmation hearing. What’s more, Specter noted, it hurts the pro-choice cause, which he supports.

That conclusion seems self-evident, given the reaction thoughtful people like Specter and Kissling had to the inflammatory message. Under pressure, NARAL pulled it.

Roberts had contended in Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic that the 1871 Ku Klux Klan law did not apply to the anti-abortion protesters who disrupted access to an abortion clinic. The blockade should have been prosecuted under a valid state law, not the federal one, Roberts argued and the Supreme Court agreed in a 6-3 decision. For this position, and the fact that the defendants included Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry and convicted clinic bomber Michael Bray, NARAL charged Roberts with “supporting violent fringe groups.”

“America,” the ad intoned, “can’t afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans.” By that logic, the late Chief Justice Earl Warren and four fellow justices supported rape and kidnapping because they held that Ernesto Miranda was wrongly deprived of legal counsel when he confessed to those crimes 40 years ago in Arizona.

In fact, Roberts has emphatically denounced anti-abortion violence, but the NARAL ad left a strong impression that he condoned it.

Even in withdrawing the ad, NARAL officials clung to a facade of legitimacy, blaming the audience that “misconstrued” the message. The non-partisan myth-busting Web site, FactCheck.org, branded it false and misleading, but NARAL President Nancy Keenan and Communications Director David E. Seldin, who resigned, maintained its accuracy.

Essentially the same information is still on the NARAL Web site where the organization calls itself “the only organization with a proven history and expertise to combat an aggressive anti-choice movement.” The cause is valid, but the TV-ad blunder damaged NARAL’s credibility as an effective messenger for it.