Vocal Prochoice Activists Launch Nationwide Offensive

Prolife groups fight back in an escalating battle over legalized abortion.

Supporters of legalized abortion have launched a nationwide campaign that is designed to stall the momentum of the prolife movement.

“There is no issue that will be fought by women with greater passion than this,” National Organization for Women (NOW) president Judy Goldsmith told a crowd of abortion proponents at a rally last month. “We will control our bodies and our lives, and we will win.”

The NOW march and rally, targeted against the Roman Catholic bishops, was one of a series of public events planned after the release of The Silent Scream, a film showing ultrasound pictures of a suction abortion. The film has been widely promoted by the prolife movement and the Reagan Administration (CT, April 5, 1985, p. 46).

The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) responded to the film with a program called “Abortion Rights: Silent No More.” The organization collected more than 40,000 letters from women who said they made the right decision in obtaining abortions, NARAL has featured the letters in “Speakout” campaigns across the country.

The letter writers’ stories range from instances of rape and serious health problems to cases of contraceptive failure and women who felt that child bearing would interrupt or ruin their careers. NARAL director Nanette Falkenberg said the letters would help “win the emotional battle” over abortion “as we continue to protect ourselves on the legal front.”

After a NARAL “Speakout” in Washington, D.C., sympathetic members of Congress read several of the letters into the Congressional Record. At the same time, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America ran full-page ads supporting abortion in the Washington Post and in four other metropolitan newspapers. The ads will run in women’s magazines later this year. A Planned Parenthood representative said the group’s Seattle affiliate produced a film that “responded to the inaccuracies” of The Silent Scream.

Bernard Nathanson, the former abortionist who narrated The Silent Scream, has been defending the film’s accuracy. At a press conference sponsored by the National Right to Life Committee, he challenged Planned Parenthood “or other abortion advocates to make their own film of an abortion, showing us what a beneficent act it is for the fetus.”

Appearing with Nathanson were two members of Women Exploited by Abortion (WEBA), a group of women who have had abortions and now try to convince other women not to have them. WEBA founder Patti Haywood-McKinney said her abortion resulted in “intense guilt and grief,” anorexia, and a lengthy stay in a hospital psychiatric unit.

Kay James, public affairs director of the National Right to Life Committee, stressed the “alternatives arm of the prolife movement” as proof that right-to-life activists are concerned about women as well as children. Declaring that 5,500 abortion centers operate in the United States, James said there soon will be enough pregnancy aid centers to match them. She said the aid centers offer services ranging from medical referral and financial assistance to housing and day care.

Undeterred by the prolife response to NARAL, NOW sponsored demonstrations in 14 cities against the Roman Catholic bishops. In Washington, some 500 demonstrators marched past the headquarters of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and then rallied in a nearby park. “Our bishops do not seek to convince us by internal dialogue and persuasion,” said Frances Kissling, director of Catholics for a Free Choice. “They intend to use the force of civil law to impose their will on us as Catholics and you as citizens.”

Richard Doerflinger, assistant director of the bishops’ Office for Pro-Life Activities, responded to Kissling’s charges. “We don’t coerce,” he said, “we lobby. But everybody lobbies.”

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