Abortion-Rights Group Pulls Anti-Roberts TV Ad

WASHINGTON After a week of protests by conservatives, an abortion-rights group said Thursday night it is withdrawing a TV 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, 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 Rove 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.”

The original ad has been airing on broadcast TV in Maine and Rhode Island and on CNN.