August 11, 2005
TV Ad Attacking Court Nominee Provokes Furor
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 - An advertisement that a leading abortion-rights organization began running on national television on Wednesday, opposing the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. as one "whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans," quickly became the first flashpoint in the three-week-old confirmation process.
Several prominent abortion rights supporters as well as a neutral media watchdog group said the advertisement was misleading and unfair, and a conservative group quickly took to the airwaves with an opposing advertisement.
The focus of the 30-second spot, which Naral Pro-Choice America is spending $500,000 to place on the Fox and CNN cable networks, as well as on broadcast stations in Maine and Rhode Island over the next two weeks, is on an argument in an abortion-related case that Judge Roberts made to the Supreme Court in the early 1990's, when he was working in the first Bush administration as the principal deputy solicitor general.
The question before the court was whether a Reconstruction-era civil rights law intended to protect freed slaves from the Ku Klux Klan could provide a basis for federal courts to issue injunctions against the increasingly frequent and violent demonstrations that were intended to block access to abortion clinics.
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