Is it too much to ask that advocates for a political point of view advance their arguments civilly, honestly, and in a straightforward manner, without engaging in character assassination, intentionally distorting facts or misleading the citizens they hope to persuade?

Some would answer that it is, given the current environment of poisonous political discourse. The Ethics Scoreboard's position is that some would be mistaken. But whether it is too much to ask or not, that is the ethical method of political argument, and that is the approach that NARAL Pro-Choice America has pointedly rejected in its efforts to discredit John Roberts, the conservative judge President Bush has nominated to the Supreme Court. Call it embracing an "ends justifies the means" philosophy, call it desperate or call it dumb, the fact is that the advocacy group made a very damning statement by running its infamous 30 second TV spot, which argued that Roberts' "ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans." But the statement doesn't damn Roberts. It damned NARAL as an organization that is willing to rely on lies to achieve its political ends. NARAL is likely to be more damaged by the consequences of its abandonment of fairness than any abortion opponent. The ad was finally pulled, but only because the organization realized that it had backfired badly. The damage was done, and the unethical mindset that created the ad almost certainly remains.

Let's put NARAL's assertions in their place right away.

The TV ad referred to arguments Roberts made before the Supreme Court when he was deputy solicitor general in the elder Bush's administration. The issue before the Court in Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic was whether a Reconstruction-era civil rights law passed to protect freed slaves from the Ku Klux Klan could be legitimately used by federal courts to issue injunctions against frequent and often violent demonstrations in front of abortion clinics. Roberts argued the administration's view that the law in question, "the Ku Klux Klan Act," did not apply to the clinic protests. In previous cases, the Supreme Court had ruled that the law, which prohibits conspiracies to deprive "any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws," required proof that a conspiracy was motivated by a "class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus."

In Bray, two lower federal courts had found that the clinic protests met that test because they were a form of discrimination against women. But Judge Roberts argued on behalf of the Administration that the lower courts were wrong. The anti-abortion demonstrators were not singling out women for discriminatory treatment, he said, but were protesting to prohibit the practice of abortion. He told the Supreme Court that it was "wrong as a matter of law and logic" to rule that opposition to abortion was equivalent to discrimination against women.

Now, none of this in any way involved support for violence. The issue in Supreme Court cases is always the interpretation of the law. The statute in this case was pretty clearly not intended or designed to be used to regulate abortion clinic protests, and (some pundits to the contrary) it is not a good idea to just use laws to mean whatever is convenient or popular at the time. If an existing current law doesn't cover a situation, then there's a rather obvious remedy: pass a new one that does. And indeed, the result of the Bray decision was that Congress passed laws regulating abortion clinic protests. Look at it this way: if courts were using, say, an air pollution statute to limit such protests, saying that the chanting of protesters "filled the air with toxic hate," that would similarly be a (rather more egregious) misuse of a law that needed to be challenged. Doing so is supporting due process, not violence.

Roberts' argument was also correct. While opposition to abortion may have its primary impact on women (a rather persuasive argument can be mounted that the primary impact of such opposition is on the unborn child, but we digress), it is truly stretching the meaning of discrimination to say that such protests are aimed at women to hurt and degrade them out of some "invidious animus." One fact is rather persuasive on this point: abortion clinic protesters frequently include large numbers of women. On the other hand, the Ku Klux Klan never had much luck recruiting African-Americans.

Then there is the fact, so often glossed over by critics who should and probably do know better, that lawyers represent their clients, not themselves. Roberts, as Roberts, wasn't personally taking any position on this case at all. That is a fact. It's also one of many facts that NARAL intentionally misrepresented. For example, the ad began with an emotional statement by a survivor of a 1998 abortion clinic bombing. NARAL's highly dishonest point: Roberts' arguments lit the fuse that exploded into this violent crime seven years earlier. Never mind that the bombing violated the law both in 1991 and 1998, and that nothing in the Supreme Court ruling in Bray made it come to pass. And never mind that legal advocates are not responsible for the decisions of the courts, and that the Bush administration would have made the same arguments before the Supreme Court in Bray whether Roberts was the one making them or not. He wasn't the only deputy solicitor general, after all. Never mind any of that: NARAL wanted viewers to think the 1998 bombing was Roberts' fault, and that he "supported" the violence, even though they know it's not true.

Before finally pulling the ad, the organization tried to justify its accusation, despite a ringing condemnation from the non-partisan "Factcheck.com," which ticked off the many misstatement by NARAL and labeled the ad "false" and the use of the 1998 bombing "misleading." NARAL's justification was just as desperate as the ad: a NARAL spokesperson said that since one of the defendants in the Bray case, Michael Bray, had participated in bombings, then Roberts was by definition "supporting" a bomber, and thus supporting violence. NARAL, we must presume, has never heard of the American concept that due process requires the law to be applied fairly and correctly even to the guilty, and thus the organization believes that every criminal defense attorney is "supporting" the heinous crimes their clients are accused of.

It is an embarrassingly silly argument.

Fortunately the pro-abortion forces are not lacking for members with integrity, and many expressed dismay at the NARAL tactics on display in the ad, and their protests, combined with the criticism of Roberts supporters and media critics, finally carried the day. But we have seen that NARAL, like too many other groups across the political spectrum, is willing to subjugate fairness and truth in its zeal to influence policy and defeat a presumed foe of its objectives. The republic, the Supreme Court, Judge Roberts and the public deserve better.