NARAL Ad Shown to be False

NARAL has released an attack ad against Supreme Court nominee John Roberts that claims (by ham-fisted implication) that he wrote a brief supporting abortion clinic bombers. According to the good folks at FactCheck.org the ad is false and misleading. FactCheck goes into what the brief actually said and pointed out that the ad uses an incident that occured SEVEN YEARS after the brief was files in a totally different matter.

In words and images, the ad conveys the idea that Roberts took a legal position excusing bombing of abortion clinics, which is false. To the contrary, during the Reagan administration when he was Associate Counsel to the President, Roberts drafted a memo saying abortion-clinic bombers "should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law." In the 1986 memo, Roberts called abortion bombers "criminals" and "misguided individuals," indicating that they would get no special treatment regarding requests for presidential pardons. Reagan in fact gave no pardons to abortion-clinic bombers.

The 1986 draft is on file at the Reagan library. The White House furnished a copy to FactCheck.org.

The ad does not even mention what the argument of the brief in question. According to FactCheck, "What Roberts argued was that a federal anti-discrimination law couldn't be used against abortion blockaders because they weren't discriminating against women – they were blockading men, too."

Let's face it, this ad is nothing but a guilt bu association piece, which is probably why CNN has accepted the ad for airing.