Abortion rights ad against Roberts criticized as unfair

Whoever at NARAL Pro-Choice America was idiotic enough to develop and broadcast their stupid ad has done great harm to the pro-choice movement. Such distortions and lies are not necessary and are counter- productive. Stupid! ---BBB

Abortion rights ad criticized as unfair
Linda Greenhouse, New York Times
Thursday, August 11, 2005

Washington -- An advertisement that a leading abortion rights organization began running on national television on Wednesday, opposing the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts as one "whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans," quickly became a flash point in the confirmation process.

Some abortion rights supporters -- such as the president of Catholics for a Free Choice -- and a neutral media watchdog group said the ad was misleading and unfair.

The focus of the 30-second spot, which NARAL Pro-Choice America is spending $500,000 to place on the Fox and CNN cable networks, is on an argument in an abortion-related case that Roberts made to the Supreme Court in the early 1990s, when he was working in the first Bush administration as the principal deputy solicitor general.

The question before the court was whether a Reconstruction-era civil rights law intended to protect the freed slaves from the Ku Klux Klan could provide a basis for federal courts to issue injunctions against the increasingly frequent and violent demonstrations that were aimed at blocking access to abortion clinics.

The court heard arguments in the case, Bray vs. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, in October 1991 and then again the following October before finally ruling in January 1993, by a vote of 6-3, that the law did not apply.

Roberts presented the administration's view that the law in question did not apply to the protests. In earlier cases, the Supreme Court had parsed the law, which prohibits conspiracies to deprive "any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws," as requiring proof that a conspiracy was motivated by a "class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus."

In this case, two federal courts had found that the protests met that test because they were a form of discrimination against women. But Roberts argued that the demonstrators were not singling out women but rather were trying to "prohibit the practice of abortion altogether." He told the court that even though only women could become pregnant or seek abortions, it was "wrong as a matter of law and logic" to regard opposition to abortion as the equivalent of discrimination against women.

The spot opens with a scene of devastation, the bombing of an Albama abortion clinic in 1998. Roberts' image is then superimposed on a faint copy of the brief he signed in the case.

According to Factcheck.org, "the ad is false" and "uses the classic tactic of guilt by association."

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/11/MNGC1E63J61.DTL