Posted on 08/11/2005 6:20:46 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Abortion Rights Group Withdraws Roberts Ad
By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer 6 minutes ago
After a week of protests by conservatives, an abortion rights group said Thursday night it is withdrawing a television advertisement linking Supreme Court nominee John Roberts to violent anti-abortion activists.
"We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
"Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public," she said in a letter Thursday to Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., who had urged the group to withdraw the ad.
Specter, himself an abortion-rights supporter as well as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that will question Roberts next month, earlier Thursday had called the ad "blatantly untrue and unfair."
The NARAL ad criticizes Roberts and links him with violent anti-abortion protesters because of the anti-abortion briefs he worked on as a government lawyer.
"The NARAL advertisement is not helpful to the pro-choice cause which I support," Specter said in a letter to Keenan.
Keenan's response said the group will replace the ad with one that "examines Mr. Roberts' record on several points, including his advocacy for overturning Roe v. Wade, his statement questioning the right to privacy and his arguments against using a federal civil rights law to protect women and their doctors and nurses from those who use blockades and intimidation."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Excellent correction.
I thought it was pronounced "GNAW'L" until recently.
I think there are more than you think. Many keep their voices down to avoid starting flame wars. I get supportive freep mails from them fairly often. If you noticed the recent FR sidebar poll, which asked whether or not Freepers supported laws making abortion illegal, about 20% said no.
I am considering a lawsuit against NARAL for sounding too much like NARWHAL. Our group is healthy, theirs is some sort of witchcraft. I don't want the public confusing us with them! NARAL leaders are certainly not "poster children" for bathing, either! Any one of them could lose eight to twelve pounds instantly at our spa just by making contact with soap and water. Fifteen minutes in one of our bubble baths and they'd probably get over their sick political hangups and come back to the world.
ROTFLMAO (literally) Thanks for lightening up my day.
Thanks, I had fun with that one :-) :-)
Misconstrue (v. mis-cons-true) When ordinary Americans catch our "MIS"take and "CONS"ervatives reveal what is "TRUE".
Who put Specter in charge of the Judiciary committee?
Why should killing unborn babies be legal, but not killing newborn babies?
AH, but Roe v. Wade isn't about making abortion illegal.
It's about setting it back to states rights. In some places, I'm sure it'd become illegal, but in most states abortion on demand would stay legal. It already was legal on demand in a few states before Roe v. Wade. Texas just wasn't one of them.
Though I'm generally a champion of states' rights, the question of at what point a fetus or baby acquires the right to the protections of a US citizen isn't one that should be left to the states. Not to mention the practical problem of all the travelling across state lines for abortions that would be caused by different state laws on the subject. And would the state where the fetus was conceived, or passed a certain stage, govern which state's law applied, or only the state in which the abortion took place? And what if different states had different laws about THAT? Would a woman who travelled to a different state for an abortion be subject to prosecution if she returned to her home state, and thus forced to stay in the state where she had the abortion?
The question of whether state funds may be used for abortions should be left to the states, but not the question of whether a woman has a right to have an abortion.
Wow it's been a long time.
People already cross state lines to get abortions at different trimesters. There are laws in place making abortion illegal at different points in time. The only difference is that Roe v. Wade said that a fetus can definitely NOT be protected until the second trimester. After that it's up to states how late they protect them. So why shouldn't it be up to states to decide on protecting a first trimester fetus?
You don't need to be a citizen of the US to have protection from US citizens killing you.
The trouble is that a state doesn't have any authority to regulate the activities of non-residents, and the matter of state residency is exceptionally fuzzy in this country. There's state residency for public school attendance purposes, for tax purposes, for voting purposes, for driver's license purposes, etc. and the criteria are different for all of them. I maintain legal residency in two states for tax purposes, but can only legally vote in one (though I'm free to choose which one). I pick and choose my residency status for different things: e.g. I take courses at a state college in New York and pay in-state tuition, but for purposes of gun ownership I'm a Pennsylvania resident (since as an NYC resident, there's no way I could get a "permit" to have any guns at all, much less carry them anywhere in the country). Trying to apply a patchwork of state laws like this, to something as inherently personal as abortion, with states fighting over who's a resident of which state, and with clear constitutional freedom for people to travel across state lines and change their residency any time they like, would just be a huge legal mess in which the lawyers get rich and everybody else loses.
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