The abortion clinics claimed the blockades amounted to sex discrimination and were therefore covered by the law. Roberts, arguing on behalf of the first Bush administration as a deputy solicitor general, said the law, a response to Ku Klux Klan activity aimed at blacks, was meant to cover racial discrimination, not sex discrimination. In any case, he said, an anti-abortion blockade does not target people based on their sex; it targets them based on their desire to obtain or facilitate abortions.
The Supreme Court decided it was not necessary to address the first argument, because it agreed with the second one. In 1993, a 6-to-3 majority ruled that the clinics were not entitled to the federal injunction they were seeking. By NARAL's logic, then, not only Roberts, but six members of the Supreme Court were guilty of "supporting violent fringe groups" and "excus[ing] violence."
A group that insists on the distinction between supporting the right to choose an abortion and supporting abortion itself should not have trouble grasping the distinction between supporting a legal interpretation that benefits anti-abortion protesters and supporting the protesters themselves.
Nor should it be blind to the difference between opposing an unauthorized federal injunction against disruptive anti-abortion protests and endorsing those protests, let alone excusing a clinic bombing that occurred five years after the case was decided.
"The ad uses the classic tactic of guilt by association," notes FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "It is false to suggest that Roberts supported the actions of 'violent' groups or clinic bombers because he argued that a law aimed at the Ku Klux Klan could not be used against those who blockade abortion clinics."
NARAL is sticking to its false equation. "It's tough and it's accurate," NARAL President Nancy Keenan told The New York Times in response to criticism of the ad. "It has done exactly what we expected it to do."
If Keenan means it has stirred up the NARAL faithful and generated contributions, maybe she's right. But if she means it has made Roberts' confirmation less likely, she is fooling herself. By mendaciously tarring Roberts as a fellow traveler of homicidal bombers, NARAL's absurd attack has diverted the debate about his nomination, making it less likely that we will learn anything interesting or useful about his views.