American abortion group strives
to improve image through name change

The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, the largest pro-abortion lobbying outfit in the United States, is in the midst of a multi-million-dollar makeover in an attempt to deflect thinking about what women are actually choosing.

NARAL is running a television, radio and print advertising campaign in an attempt to freshen the organization's image by changing its name to NARAL Pro-Choice America.

President Kate Michelman said, "Through our name change, we are underscoring that our country is pro-choice. It is the right name for this moment in history."

But it seems that it is often time for a name change. According to the New York Times, "This is the organization's fourth name since it was established in 1969 as the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws.

It is the first time it has moved away from the acronym NARAL. The group became the National Abortion Rights Action League after the critical 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, overturned many legal restrictions on abortion. Reproductive Rights was added to its name in 1993."

Bernard Nathansan, an abortionist who co-founded NARAL but later "saw the light" and became an outspoken pro-life activist, told WorldNetDaily, ""I remember laughing when we made those slogans up ... We were looking for some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion. They were very cynical slogans then, just as all of these slogans today are very, very cynical."

The Times also reported that Emory University legal historian David J. Garrow said the organization was using its new name to put a greater emphasis on choice, as opposed to abortion: "It's a free way of getting 'pro-choice' into a news story, even if editors don't allow the words to be used in the reporter's voice."

But pro-lifers point out that abortion proponents would rather have the public think about abstract ideas on liberty than the reality of the unborn child in the womb.

Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council, said, "They want to isolate the rhetoric from the reality," but noted that abortion is not like "choosing between chocolate and vanilla. We are talking about the right to choose to kill an unborn child."

Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women for America, said, "Abortion destroys human life at its most innocent and vulnerable level, and no name change will ever change that fact."

Pro-life groups noted that the public is increasingly seeing past the rhetoric, to the child. "Every parent and every grandparent who has ever seen their child or grandchild in a sonogram understands what abortion is and what it does," Rios said.

"As technology advances and allows us to see even more clearly inside the womb, the pro-abortion lobbyists' ugly intent will be exposed and their golden-ring adornment rendered irrelevant."

Furthermore, pro-life groups point to the hypocrisy of pro-abortion groups promoting choice, when they vehemently oppose the right to mandated informed choice for distressed pregnant mothers, the choice to not fund elective abortions through taxes, the right of healthcare workers to not be forced to act against their conscience, the public's right to balanced information on the issue or the right of nations in the developing world to accept desperately needed aid without abortion strings attached.

Just taking into consideration conscience rights for healthcare workers, for instance, NARAL said in an April 2002 fact sheet that such rights are better called refusal clauses, and claimed that they inhibit a woman's right to access a broad range of reproductive and sexual services, including abortion and contraception.

The document went on to say that, "Medicine - not religious ideology - should determine medical decisions." NARAL opposes the choice of healthcare workers to not participate in abortions or pharmacists to dispense contraception.