U.S. abortion rights group pulls anti-Roberts ad
A leading U.S. abortion rights advocacy group pulled a controversial television advertisement on Thursday that accuses Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of supporting an abortion clinic bomber and excusing violence.
NARAL Pro-Choice America withdrew the advertisement after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter complained in a letter that it was a blatantly unfair attack on Roberts for his participation, as deputy solicitor general, in an abortion clinic case.
President George W. Bush last month named the conservative Roberts to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court, which has been closely divided on such hot-button issues as abortion, church-state separation and the death penalty.
Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who supports abortion rights, will preside over Roberts’ September confirmation hearing.
“The NARAL television advertisement is blatantly untrue and unfair in its assertions that: Supreme Court nominee John Roberts filed Court briefs supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber and America can’t afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans,” Specter wrote.
The NARAL national advertising campaign, launched on Monday, had been widely denounced by Roberts’ supporters.
Critics had ripped the ad for talking about a brief Roberts wrote in connection with a 1993 Supreme Court ruling, but using images from a clinic bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, years after the ruling.
Responding to Specter, NARAL said in a letter it regrets that many people had “misconstrued” an advertisement it said was aimed at focusing attention on Roberts’ record.
“Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public,” NARAL president Nancy Keenan said.
“Therefore, we are changing from our current advertisement to one that examines Mr. Roberts’ record on several points, including his advocacy for overturing Roe v. Wade,” Keenan wrote.
The Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling gave women the constitutional right to choose an abortion.
On Tuesday, abortion-rights groups mostly opposed to Roberts urged the White House to release documents related to a legal brief in which he argued that civil rights laws do not protect women denied access to abortions by violent protests.
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