NARAL's lies about Judge Roberts

Regardless of what side you take in the debate over whether or not abortion should be legal, telling bald-faced lies about a Supreme Court nominee only serves to cast your organization in a bad light and expose you as irrational extremists.

NARAL Pro Choice America (NARAL stands for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, though the words "and Reproductive" were added after the name was initially chosen) is running the first television ad opposing the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court of the United States to replace the retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. There's only one problem. Much of the ad is lies and false implications.

Factcheck.org has the scoop:

An abortion-rights group is running an attack ad accusing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers “supporting . . . a convicted clinic bomber” and of having an ideology that “leads him to excuse violence against other Americans” It shows images of a bombed clinic in Birmingham , Alabama.

The ad is 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. (Emphasis in original. -RR)

Read the rest as it presents a lot of detail you probably won't hear elsewhere.

If you are advocating a certain position, and you believe that a Supreme Court nominee is likely to rule against that position should he ever hear a relevant case, and you can back up your belief with facts, then by all means you have the right to purchase ads on television or any other media which present your objections. But NARAL is flat-out lying in order to prejudice opinion against John Roberts. One would hope that the FCC or other relevant authority would investigate this ad and take appropriate action.

Hat tip: Boortz