NARAL President, Kate Michelman to Step Down; Pro-Lifers Point to Successes

Crosswalk.com ^ | 9-21-03 | Christine Hall

[ElIguana]

(CNSNews.com) - Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, announced Monday that she will resign next spring after 18 years to care for her ailing husband and to work for the defeat of President Bush in the 2004 election.

The mother of three children and grandmother of five said she plans to step down after NARAL's April 25 march in Washington to support "abortion rights," an event she hopes will mobilize voters for the presidential election.

"The next four years will almost certainly see at least two Supreme Court vacancies," Michelman said.

"If George W. Bush is allowed to fill those seats, it will mean the end of reproductive privacy and the end of Roe v. Wade," Michelman said. "I intend to do everything I can to see that does not happen."

NARAL will soon launch a nationwide search for a successor to Michelman, who will remain with the organization as its president emeritus.

While Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land, many pro-lifers believe Michelman's tenure was marked by a public opinion shift toward the pro-life position, thanks to much publicity on the partial birth abortion procedure and a decline in the number of abortion providers.

"More young people are pro-life and are choosing to not have abortion," said Wendy Wright, senior policy director of Concerned Women for America. "And fewer doctors are willing to do abortions. Even if doctors may agree with the concept of abortion, they don't want to do it themselves."

An ABC News/Washington Post poll in early 2003 found that most Americans still want to keep abortion legal in all or most cases (57 percent) and support Roe v. Wade (54 percent), but most Americans oppose so-called "partial birth" abortion.

Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, however, has said public opinion on abortion is best described as "remarkably stable," though "certainly not one-dimensional."

There seems little dispute, however, that fewer doctors perform abortion.

By the count of Life Dynamics, there used to be more than 2,000 abortion clinics in America, compared to just 754 today.

The National Abortion Federation (NAF) has bemoaned the fact that less than half of medical schools offer first trimester abortion techniques to ob-gyn residents as part of their routine training. And, according to the NAF, fewer hospitals are offering abortion services.

Moreover, crisis pregnancy centers, by some counts, outnumber abortion clinics by as much as 3 to 1. Mass NARAL, for example, says there are 51 such "anti-choice clinics" in Massachusetts, "more than twice the number of abortion clinics."

Crisis pregnancy centers are free, noted Julie Parton of Focus on the Family. And word of mouth has been an effective form of advertising for the centers, she said.

"A friend or [family member] appreciated the loving, compassionate, caring atmosphere that they found there," as opposed to a more "clinical" or "businesslike" atmosphere at abortion clinics, Parton said.

Wright and Parton foresee a big change on the horizon, though, with a brand-new ultrasound technological advancement that allows doctors and pregnant women to capture detailed color images of their baby in utero smiling, yawning and crying. This "really had this ripple effect," said Wright.

[razorbak]

Let's hear from Freepers as to appropriate candidates for the vacant position of NARAL head.

[Ronin]

Mass NARAL, for example, says there are 51 such "anti-choice clinics" in Massachusetts, "more than twice the number of abortion clinics."

Anti-choice centers? God, I want to puke.

I guess that choosing NOT to murder your baby is somehow anti-choice.

The illogic of these butchers is stunning.

[backhoe]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/987565/posts
Images of smiling babies in the womb have pro-abortion activists screeching
Union Leader ^ | September 23, 2003 | Michelle Malkin

[anniegetyourgun]

It's a wonder that Michelman doesn't embrace the Dr. Peter Singer approach to her ailing husband.

[spacewarp]

Hmmmmm. Satan? Ted Bundy? Naah.. He's dead (Sorry, late-term proceduralized). Oooooh. I know, Scott Peterson. That'll do. Apparently, he has firsthand knowledge of at least one of the procedures. The only crime he committed in that case was that it wasn't in an office with a NAF certificate on the wall. That's the ticket.....

[jmaroneps37]

How creepy is it to be associated with a group that counts it's successes in dead babies?

[thulldud]

I guess that choosing NOT to murder your baby is somehow anti-choice.

It's not illogic. It's a case of loading the language. They use the same words as you, but "choice" to them is a technical term which means "abortion".

You think it implies having the option to choose, which should be a good thing. Not so. First off, what is this "choice" anyway? It is killing a baby, a human soul in God's image, not to mention a gross violation of the baby's mother. If the merest breath of such a suggestion wafts through the air near an abortion clinic, the "choice" instantly becomes no choice at all. Which is why the "choice" crowd fulminate and fume at any suggestion of any "choice" which might result in saving the baby. As soon as the possibility is allowed into the discussion, they lose.

The darkness of ignorance is their cloak of, shall I say, "choice".

[KosmicKitty]

My husband & I were discussing just the other day how it seems that more & more young women are pro-life. He came up with a most interesting theory.

Women, who are pro choice are much more likely to have killed their children, while pro-lifers had children & these children are more likely to also be pro-life.

So, by allowing abortions to be legal, the people who believe in abortions are more likely to become extinct thru the thing which they fight for.

(God, I love this man!!!)

[Kieri]

I wonder if GE took any heat from pro-abortionist murderers for their new imaging system that shows the portrait of a preborn baby, with "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" in the background, and the mother's tears of joy at seeing her baby.

GE household appliances suck big-time, but this commercial was WONDERFUL. If it doesn't make baby-killers cringe, they're even more subhuman than I think they are.

[Ronin]

I agree with almost all of what you say, but I think the real reason for their hysterical fear is that, deep in their most secret hearts, they know what they doing is an abomination.

If you are a religious person, it is an abomination against God -- but even the Darwinists are not off the hook because our strongest instincts repel in horror from the idea of killing children, because that is contrary to race survival, and the fundamental instinct humans share with all successful organisms -- breed.

The most shrill abortion advocates are simply expressing their own fear and guilt. Guilt for killing their own children -- and fear that society will someday call abortion murder. If that happens, every woman who has had an abortion and every man who has facilitated an abortion will look into a mirror and see a murderer.

That is a horrifying image to contemplate.

[Aquinasfan]

Mass NARAL, for example, says there are 51 such "anti-choice clinics" in Massachusetts, "more than twice the number of abortion clinics."

Bleeping liars. I used to be on the board of one of the most successful pregnancy resource centers in the state, where women are really given a choice and where the women are allowed to see the ultrasound images of their unborn children, unlike Planned Infanticide. Puhleez.

Kate Michelman has 3 children and 5 grandchildren? They must feel all warm and fuzzy about nana's job.