NARAL Pro-Choice America President Calls for Partnership With Antiabortion Advocates To Prevent Unintended Pregnancies

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 13 Mar 2005 - 15:00 PDT

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NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan on Thursday at a San Francisco abortion-rights event publicly called for abortion-rights opponents and supporters to work together to prevent unplanned pregnancies, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. During the 10th annual Power of Choice luncheon, which was hosted by San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris and attended by about 1,600 women, Keenan said that abortion-rights supporters are "ready to battle the Bush administration" over judicial nominations and reproductive rights but at the same time hope to find common ground with abortion-rights opponents (Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle, 3/11). In an attempt to appeal to more moderate voters, NARAL Pro-Choice America placed a full-page advertisement -- headlined "Please, Help Us Prevent Abortions" -- in the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard. The ad features an open letter from Keenan saying, "The time has come to join together in a new campaign to reduce the number of abortions" by passing legislation to improve access to contraception (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 2/16). Although the ads so far have been "met with deafening silence," she said the group has no plans to "let up" on its attempts to find common ground with abortion-rights opponents. Her statements were "echoed" by physicians, attorneys and other reproductive rights advocates at the luncheon, according to the Chronicle. However, Mike Spence, vice president for the California Pro Life Council, said that it might be "difficult for the two sides to minimize their differences," the Chronicle reports. "There is no abortion that is not acceptable to NARAL, so that kind of extremism makes it hard to find common ground," he said (San Francisco Chronicle, 3/11).

"Reprinted with permission from kaisernetwork.org kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/repro The Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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