The National Pro-life Alliance -- a 600,000-member organization dedicated to overturning Roe v. Wade and ending abortion-on-demand -- announced today that it is expanding its work in support of Supreme Court Chief Justice nominee John G. Roberts with a national media campaign aimed at fourteen U.S. Senators in eight states.
Coinciding with the opening of Senate hearings on the nomination of Judge Roberts, the organization has budgeted $570,000 for TV and newspaper ads in Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Montana, New York, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin.
The ads can be viewed on the organization's website (click here).
Following President Bush's appointment of Roberts late last July, the pro-life organization launched ongoing mail and phone campaigns to mobilize its 600,000 members in all fifty states.
Although all of the fourteen Senators are, at present, publicly uncommitted on the Roberts' nomination, King explained that the organization decided to focus television and newspaper advertisements on these Senators because of what she described as their "unwavering pro-abortion voting records."
The targeted Senators all voted to keep legal a controversial procedure which has been called "Partial-Birth Abortion" by its pro-life opponents or "dilation and extraction" by the abortion industry.
The procedure, used in late-term abortions, involves delivering all except the head of the baby, then puncturing and extracting the brains to facilitate its removal.
Ron Fitzsimmons, the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, admitted that the procedure was normally used on healthy, viable babies for the convenience of the mother.
The American Medical Association testified that the procedure is "never medically necessary."
The federal ban on this procedure passed the Senate in October 2003 by a vote of 64 to 34 and was signed into law by President Bush.
Mary King explained that "the fact that these fourteen Senators stood with a small minority to vote against even hugely popular, minor limits on abortion-on-demand indicates that they are likely to use a pro-abortion litmus test when voting on judicial nominees.
"In our advertising campaign, we are insisting that they drop any litmus test and take a look at Robert's qualifications as a strict constructionist judge who will uphold rather than rewrite the Constitution."
The nomination has become especially contentious between advocates and opponents of abortion since the Supreme Court overturned a Nebraska state law banning partial-birth abortion on June 28, 2000 by a bare 5 to 4 majority.
Judge John G. Roberts was originally nominated to fill the seat of retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who voted to overturn the Nebraska law.
"At the time of his original nomination," said King, "it was believed that Roberts' commitment to a strict construction of the Constitution could tip the Court in favor of upholding the federal ban on partial-birth abortion."
However, following the death of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Roberts was re-nominated to replace Rehnquist, whose position is thought to mirror that of Roberts', a former clerk for Rehnquist.
With Roberts elevated as nominee for the position of Chief Justice, a new nominee must be nominated to fill the seat of retiring justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
According to King, "the nomination of another judge who won't try to impose his or her agenda on the rest of this country could tip the balance in favor of upholding the ban on Partial-Birth Abortion.
"But the Supreme Court would still be one seat short of the majority necessary to overturn Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the 1973 cases which created a right to abort during the full nine-months of pregnancy."
The National Pro-Life Alliance is focusing on the following fourteen U.S. Senators who voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, either on final passage or on key procedural votes: Thomas Carper (Delaware), Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (Maine), Max Baucus (Montana), Herbert Kohl and Russ Feingold (Wisconsin), Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin (Michigan), Jack Reed and Lincoln Chafee (Rhode Island), Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray (Washington), and Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer (New York).
Source: Pro-Life Alliance Press Release
