Political Watchdog: Abortion Ad Blasting John Roberts is Misleading

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Aug 10, 2005   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Political Watchdog: Abortion Ad Blasting John Roberts is Misleading Email this article
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 10, 2005

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A political watchdog group says a new television commercial sponsored by the pro-abortion group NARAL is false and misleading about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ views on abortion-related violence. NARAL’s ads accuses Roberts of siding with a convicted abortion facility bomber.

FactCheck.org, an investigative web site, says the NARAL ad "misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber" because the case in which Roberts filed a brief for the former Bush administration "didn’t deal with bombing at all."

"The images used in the ad are especially misleading," the web site, based at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, indicated. "The pictures are of a clinic bombing that happened nearly seven years after Roberts signed the legal brief in question."

"In words and images, the ad conveys the idea that Roberts took a legal position excusing bombing of abortion clinics, which is false," FactCheck wrote in an analysis of the NARAL ad. The center points out that Roberts, during a stint in the Reagan administration, wrote a memo in which he said abortion facility bombers "should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

"The ad fails to mention that the ‘court briefs’ it mentions are actually from nearly seven years before the abortion clinic bombing talked about in the ad," FactCheck adds.

Despite the criticism, former Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt says the ad says the ad raises legitimate questions about Roberts.

"The problem with Roberts is that he is a very attractive face with a very questionable record, and I think people are right to ask questions," Feldt told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday.

"But the ruling and the argument that led to hardly excuses violence, as the NARAL ad falsely claims," FactCheck concludes. "Nowhere in Roberts’ court brief or oral arguments does he defend or excuse acts of violence."