THE CHOICE "THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME".

NARAL has repackaged itself for the third time. A NARAL press release dated January 6, 2003, announces: "America's Most Recognized Defender Of A Woman's Right To Choose Unveils Massive New Mobilization & Education InitiativeE. On the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, America faces an anti-choice White House, Congress, and the potential of a Supreme Court willing to roll back the right to choose. E In response, the nation's most effective pro-choice organization has a new name--NARAL Pro-Choice America--and a massive nationwide mobilization initiative."

Why the name change? NARAL's polling must have shown that it is a lot easier to sell "choice" than "abortion." Being the "most recognized" and "most effective" pro-abortion lobbying group has a serious downside, don't you think? And people don't like abortion. In fact, even NARAL's president, Kate Michelman, once admitted to the Philadelphia Inquirer (12/11/1993): "We think that abortion is a bad thing. No woman wants to have one." (Attacked by fellow pro-abortionists over the remark, Ms. Michelman promptly denied having said it. But the interview had been taped, and the Inquirer stuck to its story.)

Committed pro-abortionists don't want to admit that "abortion is a bad thing," but the people at NARAL seem convinced that the word abortion is a bad thing: The two pages of the NARAL press release feature the words "choice" or "choose" 22 times but not once the word "abortion." To borrow a phrase from the poet Oscar Wilde, NARAL stands for a choice "that dare not speak its name."

It's instructive to review the evolution of the NARAL name.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a co-founder of NARAL, recalls in his book Aborting America (1979, Doubleday, New York) that "[t]he Planning Committee of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws held its first meeting at 12:30 P.M., Tuesday, February 25 [1969] in the office of Stewart Mott at 515 Madison Avenue [New York City]. E The public unveiling of N.A.R.A.L. took place at noon on Thursday, May 8, a fine sunny day." [Pages 47 & 61.]

After the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, NARAL retained the acronym but changed its name to National Abortion Rights Action League.

As the right-to-life movement gained strength, and as the general public became increasingly aware of abortion being a "bad thing," NARAL in 1993 expanded its name (without changing the acronym) to National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. Obviously, the fudge term "reproductive rights" was supposed to detract from NARAL's single-minded promotion of the right to the "bad thing," abortion. "Reproductive rights" was used by the Clinton Administration as the code word for abortion rights.