Abortion Advocates Bash President Bush in Wake of New Campaign Ad

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jul 19, 2004   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Abortion Advocates Bash President Bush in Wake of New Campaign Ad

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 19, 2004

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A leading abortion advocacy group is coming to the aid of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in the wake of television and radio ads from the Bush campaign that criticize Kerry’s pro-abortion voting record.

President Bush’s re-election campaign has been running ads that take Kerry to task for voting against parental notification legislation and a bill to protect pregnant women from violent assaults. They imply that Kerry voting record is out of the mainstream.

But NARAL, a leading pro-abortion group, says it is Bush, not Kerry, whose position is at odds with most voters.

"George Bush is making a desperate attempt to distract Americans from his radical record and dangerous views on reproductive rights issues," NARAL’s interim president Elizabeth Cavendish said. "Bush’s real position is clear — he has never backed away from his vow to ‘do everything in my power’ to take away a woman’s right to choose."

NARAL cites a July 2004 Catholics for a Free Choice poll and a June 2003 NARAL survey that claim 60 percent of Catholic voters favor legal abortion and 80 percent of voters believe abortion should be a decision made between a woman and her doctor.

However, those surveys are anomalies and contradict most polls that show a majority of Americans — including women and Catholics — are pro-life.

A September 2003 poll conducted by the Polling Company found that 54 percent of women selected one of three different pro-life views opposing all or almost all abortions. Only 39 percent backed abortion.

In June 2003, the Center for the Advancement of Women, a group that backs abortion, released the results of a poll showing that 51 percent of women took a pro-life position.

Meanwhile, a Zogby International poll https://www.lifenews.com/nat527.html of 1,388 Catholics conducted in May shows the likely Democratic presidential nominee getting the support of only 20% of Catholic voters on issues where he disagrees with the position of the church.

What concerns NARAL most is that Bush, in a second term, will appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court. The current court favors abortion by a 6-3 margin and two judges are needed to provide a pro-life majority and reverse Roe v. Wade.

"If George Bush is re-elected, he will likely get the chance to remake the Supreme Court by adding new justices in the mold of his oft-cited models, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas," Cavendish explained. "But he will only get that chance if he can keep America’s pro-choice majority distracted with misleading and distorted ads like the one released this week. We are here to make sure he can’t get away with it."

The new Bush campaign radio spot says Kerry has missed two-thirds of the votes that have taken place this year in the Senate while he has been out campaigning. But, when Kerry has voted, "it makes you wish he never showed up."

"Kerry voted against parental notification for teenage abortions, taking control away from parents, taking away their right to know," the radio ad says.