“Choice for America” is the TV advertising campaign launched by the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) immediately following President George W. Bush’s inauguration. It is no coincidence that NARAL’s ads trail Bush’s presidency. The Clinton-Gore administration could be counted on unquestionably to represent NARAL’s viewpoints in almost all matters. But now that Bush resides at 2200 Pennsylvania Avenue no one is quite certain what philosophy will be espoused. NARAL wants to be sure that its core values reside not only in the White House, but in every house and heart across America.
NARAL’s “I Believe” commercial leads people to think that “the right to choose” is a “founding principle of our country” — a right that must be defended and protected if we are to remain bona fide Americans. The ad powerfully displays women’s faces as a female voice says, “I believe there’s a reason we are born with free will. And I have a strong will to decide what’s best for my body, my mind, my life. I believe in myself. In my intelligence, my integrity, my judgment. And I accept full responsibility for the decisions I make. I believe in my right to choose without interrogations, without indignities, without violence. I believe that’s one of the founding principles of our country. And I believe that right is being threatened. The greatest of human freedoms is choice. And I believe no one has the right to take that freedom away. What’s life without choice? Pro-choice.”
Most people would not guess that the word “pro-choice” is a modern term invented by a predominant abortionist in the late 1960s. According to Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL, creator of the phrase “pro-choice” and now a pro-life activist, NARAL truly is in the trade of defining and redefining. “We in NARAL were in the business of coining slogans principally for the media…. Slogans like ‘reproductive rights,’ ‘freedom of choice,’ ‘pro-choice.’… It’s amazing to me that many of the slogans I coined…in those years are still being used by NARAL…. They were only…slogans…but never the truth.” Nathanson also reveals, “[t]he statistics that we gave to the American public about illegal abortions annually; the statistics we fabricated regarding the number of women dying from illegal abortions annually, all of these matters were pure fabrication…with very little link or nexus to reality at all…and they still persist to this very day.”
Since 1969, NARAL has served as the political arm of the pro-abortion movement. NARAL claims to be an ardent supporter of “reproductive freedom” and “choice.” Spreading anti-life misinformation to Americans and politicians as well as working to elect pro-abortion candidates in all levels of government is part of the group’s mission. It’s work is divided among three organizations: NARAL, Inc., a 501(c)(4) non-profit political association; NARAL-PAC, the political action committee supporting the election of pro-abortion candidates; and the NARAL Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization that conducts research and legal work, publishes policy reports, prepares public education campaigns and instructs grassroots activists across America.
The influence of NARAL should not be underestimated. Fortune magazine described NARAL as one of the top 10 advocacy groups in America; and Washingtonian magazine named the president of NARAL, Kate Michelman, one of Washington D.C.’s most powerful women. NARAL has “a proactive agenda,” states the biography of Michelman, “focused on defining the freedom to choose as a fundamental American value”.
One of the greatest human freedoms is choice, but not as NARAL understands it. As Dr. Bernard Nathanson — creator of the word — said, “pro-choice” is an empty slogan invented only to mold public opinion. To claim that “pro-choice” or “free choice” is a founding principle of our country is utter deception. The Founding Fathers of America supported liberty, not license. To believe in liberty is to believe in the existence of an immutable right and wrong; to believe in license is to believe individuals can create right and wrong out of their own arbitrary desires. The Founders believed in liberty, the modern Supreme Court (as evidenced in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey) in license.
As Samuel West, a predominant figure of the Founding Era, reminds us, “perfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he…introduces confusion and disorder into society…[thus] where licentiousness begins, liberty ends.”
Liberty is not of man’s own design, but a submission of self to a higher law. John Dickinson, chairman of the Committee for the Declaration of Independence explains, “Our liberties do not come from charters; for these are only the declaration of pre-existing rights. They do not depend on parchments or seals; but come from the King of Kings and the Lord of all the earth.” Defiantly, contemporary Supreme Court Justices O’Connor, Kennedy and Souter, in the case of Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, declared, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
NARAL’s philosophy echoes the voice of the contemporary Court, not America’s Founding Fathers. No wonder NARAL and Planned Parenthood want to convince President Bush and every American that the “pro-choice” way is the American way. No wonder pro-abortion advocates worry so much about who will be appointed to the Supreme Court — for if Americans realize that true choice resides in the choice of liberty over license, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, et. al. will lose the battle and Americans will regain their freedom.
(Jennifer Taylor is a freelance writer for HLI. This article courtesy of HLI Reports, a publication of Human Life International.)
