c. 2000 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Priests for Life, a Roman Catholic group, has launched a national ad campaign urging voters to oppose candidates who back abortion rights.
A $250,000 ad blitz began airing earlier this week on major cable TV stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Washington and other cities.
Without mentioning any candidate by name, the ads argue that no politician can responsibly advocate abortion. “If those elected to public office can’t respect the life of a little baby, how are they supposed to respect yours?” the Rev. Frank Pavone, founder and president of Priests for Life, says in an ad.
“We hope to stir up voters to vote in such a way as to bring an end to the killing of children by abortion,” Pavone said in an interview.
He said the ads were intended to raise the profile of the abortion issue in the current political season and increase the turnout of anti-abortion voters.
Though unrelated, the ads come just as the Food and Drug Administration has announced its approval for the selling of RU-486, an early-abortion pill that many believe will transform the debate over abortion in the United States.
Some abortion rights supporters have long argued that the matter should not be a campaign issue at all.
“My feeling is that abortion should not be a political issue because it’s a health matter,” said Katina Johnstone, a Democrat challenging Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y.
“I actually find abortion difficult to talk about because I think it is a very personal and private issue,” Johnstone said. She said that while she opposes use of abortion as a form of birth control, she believes it has to remain a legal option for women in “drastic” situations.
“I am of an age (to) remember when women were taken away blindfolded to get an abortion, and were lucky to return alive,” Johnstone said. “We can’t go back to those days.”
Adam Bromberg, who produced the Priests for Life ads, said the targeted cities contain large Catholic populations.
The group, whose members include some 6,000 Catholic priests and 40,000 lay Catholics around the nation, plans to spend more than $1 million on ads before the November election. The group also is poised to mount a national get-out-the-vote drive through a network of phone banks.
The group says it hopes to augment the drive through direct exhortations from the pulpit, op-ed articles in local newspapers, mass-produced audio tapes and booklets, and bulletins posted on its Internet site.
Prominent members of the group are attempting to arrange meetings with candidates to draw attention to their stances on the abortion issue.
Pavone said he had met briefly with Republican presidential contender George W. Bush, who is anti-abortion, at a photo-op in New York earlier this year, and with aides to Vice President Al Gore, who supports abortion rights.
While Gore declined to meet with him personally, Pavone said, the session with his aides “went well.”
Among voters who turn out specifically to cast ballots according to candidates’ abortion views, those who oppose abortion typically outnumber abortion rights supporters by almost 2-to-1, according to exit polls taken in recent years. By increasing that ratio, Pavone said, his group could change the political landscape on the issue.
The priests’ campaign has come under fire from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Leaders of that group have charged Priests for Life is “very close to crossing the line” that restricts involvement by tax-exempt religious organizations in partisan politics.
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