NARAL Ad Smacked Down

NARAL's appallingly bad ad wrongly linking Judge Roberts to abortion clinic bombings is, itself, bombing.

Factcheck.org made the same points CSM and many others have made in calling the ad false:

And the ad misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber. It is true that Roberts sided with the bomber and many other defendants in a civil case, but the case didn't deal with bombing at all. Roberts argued that abortion clinics who brought the suit had no right use an 1871 federal anti-discrimination statute against anti-abortion protesters who tried to blockade clinics. Eventually a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court agreed, too. Roberts argued that blockades were already illegal under state law. The images used in the ad are especially misleading.

The pictures are of a clinic bombing that happened nearly seven years after Roberts signed the legal brief in question.

Even anti-Roberts, pro-abortion groups are distancing themselves from the ad, according to the NYTimes:

Within the larger liberal coalition of which Naral is a part, there was considerable uneasiness about the advertisement, although leaders of other groups generally refused to speak on the record. One who did, Frances Kissling, the longtime president of Catholics for a Free Choice, said she was "deeply upset and offended" by the advertisement, which she called "far too intemperate and far too personal."

Ms. Kissling, who initiated the conversation with a reporter, said the ad "does step over the line into the kind of personal character attack we shouldn't be engaging in."

She added: "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 former acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration and longtime Naral supporter, sent a letter on Wednesday to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and its ranking Democrat, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, respectively. Mr. Dellinger said he had disagreed with Mr. Roberts's argument in the Bray case but considered it unfair to give "the impression that Roberts is somehow associated with clinic bombers." He added that "it would be regrettable if the only refutation of these assertions about Roberts came from groups opposed to abortion rights."

"How low can these frustrated liberals sink?" asks the counter-ad, to be run by Progress for America.

Question: Why should Fox and CNN, recipients of Naral's $500,000 largesse, continue to run an ad that's been proved false and misleading? Oh yeah, capitalism. I love capitalism, but ...