Abortion Rights Group Launches Campaign Against Bush Nominee

A leading abortion rights group has launched the first serious attack on President George Bush's supreme court nominee John Roberts by screening a national television advertisement accusing him of excusing violence by protesters outside abortion clinics.

The controversial ad, which was widely condemned yesterday, is the first flashpoint in the nomination process for Mr Roberts, who is the choice of the White House to take over from Sandra Day O'Connor.

The 30-second advert, funded by Naral Pro-Choice America, stems from a supreme court case during the first Bush administration when - as an assistant to the solicitor general - Mr Roberts successfully argued that a federal civil rights law should not be used to prevent anti-abortion protesters from blocking access to women's clinics.

The advert, which is being shown on CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and several local stations, opens with images showing the devastation following the bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, in January 1998.

The ad also features Emily Lyons, who was seriously injured in the attack. It ends by urging viewers to "Call your senators. Tell them to oppose John Roberts. America can't afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans".

But yesterday even prominent abortion rights supporters, as well as a neutral media watchdog group, said the advertisement was misleading and unfair.

Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, told the New York Times she was "deeply upset and offended" by the ad, which she called "far too intemperate and far too personal".

Factcheck.org, a non-partisan project run by the University of Pennsylvania that monitors political ads and speeches for accuracy, dismissed the ad as "false" and for using the classic tactic of "guilt by association".

With the supreme court finely balanced over the issue of abortion, it is inevitably the touchstone for both the right and the left.

Nominations are seen as mini-presidential campaigns, with organisations on both sides spending millions of dollars fighting or endorsing the candidate.

But the senior Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, which is due to begin hearings into Mr Roberts' nomination on September 6, raised a sceptical note about the effectiveness of the campaigns.

"These outside lobbying groups, whether on the right or the left, have become, for me anyway, basically irrelevant," Senator Patrick Leahy said. "They will probably be offended by that and I am not saying they shouldn't do what they do. I just wish they didn't. There are some people it would be tempting to pass early judgment on ... but I don't think Roberts falls into that category.

Walter Dellinger, a senior lawyer in the Clinton administration and longtime Naral supporter, said he had disagreed with Roberts' argument in the Bray case but considered it unfair to give "the impression that Roberts is somehow associated with clinic bombers".

However, Naral's president, Nancy Keenan, defended the advertisement during an interview in her office.

"It is tough and it's accurate," she told the New York Times. "It has done exactly what we expected it to do," namely to provide a "wake-up call" about the stakes for reproductive freedom at issue in the current supreme court vacancy.

Ms Keenan, a former Montana state legislator who has headed the organisation for the past year, said it was important to note that because the federal government was not a party in the Bray case, the administration's participation in the supreme court appeal was voluntary.

A conservative group, Progress for America, is spending $300,000 to run ads, due to be broadcast yesterday on the same stations on which the Naral ad is appearing.

"How low can these frustrated liberals sink?" they ask.