NARAL Pro-Choice America Takes Campaign Against Anti-Choice Attacks to the Airwaves

Ad featuring Rep. Bart Stupak starts running tomorrow

Washington, D.C. – Building on its lobbying, education, and grassroots mobilization efforts around health-care reform, NARAL Pro-Choice America released a television spot urging Americans to call on Congress to reject anti-choice attacks from politicians like Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.).
The ad is set to begin in key mid-sized media markets, including Richmond, Va., Raleigh, N.C., and the Portland and Bangor markets in Maine. In addition, the ad will run in multiple markets in Michigan and other state markets that air in Rep. Stupak’s congressional district.
The ad comes as the Senate debates health reform, and anti-choice senators threaten to offer an amendment similar to the Stupak amendment that passed the House.
“This ad is another important step in our efforts to keep women from losing ground in the new health-care system,” said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “More and more Americans are joining us in calling on Congress to reject the divisive efforts by Rep. Stupak and other politicians to use abortion to derail health reform. This targeted ad will help us enlist even more Americans into our campaign to defeat the Stupak abortion-coverage ban.”
The Stupak-Pitts amendment, added to the House health bill before its passage, would make it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new system to offer abortion coverage to women. This would have the effect of denying women the right to use their own, private funds to purchase an insurance plan with abortion coverage in the new health system — a radical departure from the status quo. Currently, more than 85 percent of private-insurance plans cover abortion services.
NARAL Pro-Choice America’s ad represents the group’s next phase of mobilization on health-care reform. On December 2, the organization and many of its state affiliates participated in a grassroots lobby day on Capitol Hill, which called on the Senate to say “no” to the Stupak language. Prior to that, on November 23, the organization delivered a petition with 97,128 signatures to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, calling on the Senate to keep the Stupak-Pitts language out of its bill. More than 229,000 NARAL Pro-Choice America and state affiliate activists called, wrote to, and visited their lawmakers during the summer months, and the media have reported on NARAL Pro-Choice America's other mobilization efforts, including automated calls and volunteer-led phone banks in 20 states.
View NARAL Pro-Choice America's television ad.
View the fact sheet about the ad.